


Separated From The Stars

by astrangerenters



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Planet, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, M/M, Rival Relationship, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:17:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9013582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: Their worlds have never gone to war, but tensions are at an all-time high. Satoshi has little choice but to attend secretive negotiations with his rival, Crown Prince Sho. Their rendezvous at a forbidden planet will lead them down an even more dangerous path than they realize…





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yama Space Royalty AU!

Buttoning his coat, he waved off the servant who was attacking him with a hairbrush. “Enough already,” Ohno Satoshi complained. “I can brush my own hair.”

Perched on the corner of Satoshi’s desk, Matsumoto Jun let out one of his characteristic sighs. “If you’d returned on time, Your Highness, we wouldn’t be rushing like this.”

He scowled at his advisor. For someone whose purpose in life was to serve him, Jun seemed to take great pleasure in being casual. It hadn’t always been this way between them. When Satoshi had turned twenty, his father had assigned Jun to him. Back then, Jun had only been seventeen, still studying in the civil service academy. He’d been promoted early only because Jun’s father had served the Ohno royal family for many years. Thrilled with the appointment but nervous, young Jun had used the politest of polite language with Satoshi, had looked on him almost as a god. 

That hadn’t lasted long.

Satoshi had just turned thirty-six, and Jun had been advising him for sixteen years now. These days Jun called him “Your Highness” only because he’d get thrown in prison for calling him an idiot.

Satoshi snatched the brush from the servant’s hand, looking into the glass and frowning at the state of himself. His sister did not understand what the word “vacation” meant. He’d been relaxing on Lake Kobayashi, fishing his days away. Satoshi relished his private time, time away from his royal commitments. And then Mina had sent that nasty summons. 

“You! Get back here now!” it had said, and he’d had no choice but to comply.

After all, his older sister ruled the planet.

So he’d left all his stuff behind at the lake cabin, his fishing rods and tackle box. He’d ditched his casual fishing clothes and had boarded the Kaisei, flying back to the capital in near-record time. Of course, there’d been the small matter of not reading Mina’s message right away. He’d been on the lake when it had arrived, and Jun had had to rent a boat himself to come out and find him. So while he was back in record time, he wasn’t exactly _on_ time.

“You still smell like fish,” Jun teased when Satoshi had made himself presentable enough, the two of them walking through the royal palace to the throne room.

“And you ought to be executed for your comments,” Satoshi snapped back, still pissed off about being torn so abruptly from his vacation. 

He’d never actually do anything to Jun, rude comments or no. Without Jun, Satoshi would likely be hated planet-wide. Jun kept Satoshi on a schedule, got him from royal function to royal function, helped write his speeches, kept him informed of all the important kingdom developments. Jun and all his efforts made Satoshi look like a well-behaved sparkling prince rather than the lazy curmudgeon he actually was.

The guards opened the doors, and Satoshi strolled in, spying his sister sitting on the throne in all her glory. The bright blue banners of their royal house that were suspended from the ceiling hung a bit limply in the warm room to either side of her, the summer breezes Satoshi had enjoyed on the lake not quite following him home. She had her CompTab in her hand, was reading some report or other that her advisors had given her.

Their father had abdicated only a year earlier, and Mina had inherited a larger burden than she’d realized. King Mamoru had come from the “My Pace” school of leadership, the “let the advisors handle it” school. Mina, however, was far more driven than her father or her younger brother. She was active, intelligent. And really damn bossy.

Then again, she’d decided that she had to be.

Akatsuki, their planet, was a real mess. But it always had been, and their father had mostly just tried to keep them at status quo. To not let things get any worse at the expense of pushing for things to get any better. Akatsuki was a largely agrarian world, most of its populace engaged in farming. But Akatsuki was overpopulated. Not everyone could have a farm or work for one. Cities were crowded, and there wasn’t enough food for everyone.

The solution a century ago had been migration. Their neighboring planet, wealthy Kagerou, had set up several mining colonies in the asteroid fields that lay just beyond its orbit. With Akatsuki overburdened and the domed cities of Kagerou needing an absurd amount of power, Kagerou had offered jobs to Akatsuki. Hundreds of thousands left Akatsuki for the Kagerou mining colonies, where they were given housing and food along with wages in exchange for their labor. 

But it wasn’t a perfect solution. While the overpopulation problem was kept at bay, thousands leaving every year for the colonies, their lives weren’t any easier. Kagerou’s mines were dangerous, Akatsuki citizens doing all the hard labor digging for the kaenium that powered Kagerou’s cities. Nothing they mined went back to Akatsuki. 

And snobby Kagerou didn’t really care what happened to the miners. The housing was barely adequate, their food was rationed, and wages were low. As the decades wore on and people continued to leave Akatsuki either way, Kagerou figured that they could keep treating the Akatsuki people like second-class citizens because there’d always be more coming. If one group of miners tired of the poor conditions and headed back home, there’d always be fresh blood coming to replace them.

The situation had worsened in the last few years as King Mamoru’s reign came to a close. Sakurai Shun, the king of Kagerou, had inherited problems of his own. Kagerou was a technology-rich world, but it was not an easy place to live. While Akatsuki had a good climate and breathable air, Kagerou didn’t. Kagerou was cold. Kagerou’s air wasn’t fit for humans. Kagerou’s cities were all inside massive domes, and the more domes they built across their harsh planet, the more kaenium they needed to burn to keep them running. 

As their cities sucked away all the kaenium, more and more money went to funding their mining colonies. The Kagerou cheapskates never wanted to budge on wages or on better living conditions for their workers, funneling most of the money into making the mining process itself more efficient. Spending money on technology and general upkeep rather than on the hardworking people they relied on.

It had finally come to a head six months ago, only half a year into Mina’s reign. A group of miners on one of the asteroids had gone on strike. Though their work contracts prohibited them from formally organizing themselves, they’d done so in secret. The strike spread each week from asteroid to asteroid, colony to colony. Kagerou retaliated by cutting rations, threatening to cut power to the housing units scattered on or below the asteroids’ rocky surfaces. The only person keeping things from getting violent was Mina, who’d been in contact with the union organizers and had urged calm.

From the look on Mina’s face, the latest round of negotiations with King Shun and his representatives had not gone well.

Satoshi approached the throne, bowing politely. “Your Majesty, I have returned.”

She looked up, her heavy jeweled headpiece jiggling with the effort. “Well, it’s about time.”

The advisors and guards in the throne room kept their facial expressions neutral, but everyone had served the Ohno family for a long time. They all knew that Satoshi and his sister weren’t terribly interested in adhering to overly polite court etiquette if they could get away with it.

“Have I missed anything?” he inquired, approaching her without permission and sliding into the empty throne beside her. He leaned back comfortably, watching Jun’s expression darken as he once again ignored protocol in favor of playing the foolish little brother. 

Mina’s husband Kenji, the prince consort, was on a peacekeeping mission in the Southern Reach region. Many miners came from the area, and their families frequently held protests demanding the Queen take stronger action against Kagerou. If Mina was smart, she’d sent her son and heir Yuta along. Nothing dispersed an angry crowd like an adorable three year old waving.

Mina didn’t make any comments about how he was sitting, his usual slouch. She’d always been very tolerant of his occasional leaps into childishness, so long as he did what she asked. And Satoshi was very good about following orders, even if he complained along the way. 

She leaned over, the royal lapis lazuli ring gleaming on her left hand as she held out the CompTab. Tapping the screen, a video started to play, the sound echoing through the throne room. Satoshi watched with a frown as a group of miners broke into a general store in one of the mining camps, a young female clerk cowering in fright as men carried off sacks of rice, passing them out the door and into the waiting arms of other miners.

Mina stopped the video. “The more they act up, the more Kagerou will push back.”

Satoshi looked at the paused image on the screen, the camera focused on the poor young clerk, likely someone from Kagerou. He imagined that every video screen in every one of Kagerou’s cities was replaying this on a loop. The lazy Akatsuki thugs who can’t be bothered to work stealing from their generous employers. At least that was how their media would spin it.

“Was the clerk injured?” he asked.

“No, thank the stars,” his sister admitted, handing the CompTab off to one of her advisors. “They know what will happen if they hurt anyone.”

In order to keep the strike as peaceful as possible, Mina had enacted a temporary law that said any striker causing physical harm to Kagerou equipment, property, or persons would be jailed back home on Akatsuki, no exceptions. Satoshi wondered if stealing rice came under the purview of Mina’s new law.

He sighed. “Of course they’re going to steal if Kagerou keeps cutting their rations.”

“I know that,” Mina agreed. 

He didn’t like the dark circles under his sister’s eyes, the exhaustion in her voice that he could hear but few others would discern. The longer the strike carried on, the worse it would be. People were demanding that Mina send food and supplies to the strikers. And Satoshi knew she wanted to help, but intervening would bring even tougher retribution from Kagerou.

The two planets had never gone to war. They’d never had reason to. But things were on edge more than ever these days. The miners were considered Kagerou workers, and the strike was a Kagerou issue. If Mina sent aid to the miners, it would be seen as unlawful interference, even though they were her people. Bolstering the miners in their strike would have grave consequences. And if the strikers kept refusing to work, Kagerou’s reserves of kaenium would dry up. The domed cities would get cold. Maybe even go dark. And as soon as Kagerou felt the loss, as soon as their pampered little lives got just a bit harder, they’d retaliate.

It had been a tightrope for Mina to walk the last several months. Satoshi had only run away for a vacation to get out of the capital for a few days, to get away from the protesting crowds, to get away from their all too reasonable requests for the Ohno family to do something.

“You didn’t call me home just to watch a video,” he said, continuing to sit casually but lowering his voice and hoping he sounded serious.

Mina spoke quietly as well, her fingertips tapping on the arm of the chair. “Sakurai wants to talk.”

Satoshi smirked. “He wants you to throw the thieves in jail.”

“I’m sure he does, but that’s not the Sakurai I meant.”

He slumped even further in his chair. Not this again. “Nee-chan, no.”

“He’s gone behind his father’s back this time. I had my techs check the encryption on the message he sent. They traced it back, and it was definitely sent through unofficial channels. I think he’s finally going rogue.”

The rogue in question was Sakurai Shun’s heir apparent, Crown Prince Sho. The future ruler of Kagerou had been a thorn in Satoshi’s side the last several months. King Shun would never leave his stupid dome to negotiate about poor, lowly miners, so he usually sent his son. Crown Prince Sho had come to Akatsuki five times in the last few months of the strike, arriving with his entourage of sycophants.

Satoshi had been forced to sit through meals and day-long meetings with the guy, serving as Mina’s primary representative. Crown Prince Sho was everything Satoshi was not. He actually was the “sparkling prince” stereotype and didn’t rely on someone like Jun to keep him in line. 

Where Satoshi’s hobbies included leaving the capital to fish and forget about his troubles as often as possible, Sakurai Sho was obsessed with rule. Unlike Satoshi, a second child who was already outranked in the line of succession by a three year old, Sho was the eldest child of the Sakurai family and would come into power whenever his father retired or passed away. He had a handful of degrees from Keio Academy, his planet’s most prestigious institution. Politics and law and economics. He presided over the Kagerou House of Councillors, the planet’s lawmaking body, as his father’s right hand man. 

When Satoshi would try to ease into negotiations, going through the talking points Jun and other staffers had forced him to memorize, Sakurai had a counter-punch to every single one. A raise in wages? After half a year of intermittent striking they’d be lucky to continue on at their current rate. Fewer restrictions on rationing? Shipping costs between Kagerou and the colonies weren’t cheap, especially since Akatsuki contributed nothing, so close monitoring of goods and foodstuffs was increasingly necessary. Shortened work hours? Sakurai had pages and pages of forecasting readouts on his CompTab, Satoshi’s eyes spinning at all the math. Shortening hours meant that hiring more workers would be necessary to keep up the pace of production, and the cost of housing and feeding them would cut even further into their bottom line.

Satoshi came out of those meetings close to screaming, especially because Sakurai Sho barely seemed like he had to try. He had an answer for everything or a deflecting reply that would pivot away from Akatsuki’s genuine concerns. He was simply a parrot for his father’s inflexible policies toward the foreign workers, a genial robot spitting out numbers and percentages that left Satoshi sputtering and desperate to get back to the solitude and simplicity of his lake cabin.

And the worst part? The absolute worst part?

Sakurai Sho was stupidly attractive. Brains _and_ beauty, Jun knowingly teased in an unnecessary fashion whenever Satoshi failed yet again to get the guy to budge.

He was very pale, as so many of his people were from living under thick domes and relying on artificial light their entire lives. But he was athletically-built and strong, bragging during one of their meals about some “Dome to Dome” running challenge he’d undertaken recently, racing with others across his planet’s unforgiving surface in a space suit and helmet with an oxygen tank on his back. 

He had a big friendly smile and an easy laugh. He was a few inches taller than Satoshi, always looking down at him with a wry grin when they shook hands, even though he was a few years younger and didn’t have to be so obvious and rude about the differences in their sizes. He had large brown eyes that Satoshi liked way too much. Round and unchanging, even as the hours passed during their meetings and Satoshi tried more and more desperately to crack him, to get him to give in on at least one damn thing for the sake of the people caught in the middle.

“What do you mean by going rogue?” Satoshi asked, not believing it. In every meeting they’d had, Sakurai Sho came across as his father’s son through and through, a loyal heir who’d continue the same practices when he became king.

“He thinks that sooner or later his father may abandon diplomacy. That is, if more incidents like the theft of the rice happen, and we know they will. We cannot afford a war with these people. We have the superior numbers, but they could crush us in a day with their ships and firepower, and we both know it,” Mina explained. “Crown Prince Sho still wants to negotiate with us, but in secret.”

Satoshi rolled his eyes. “What’s to be negotiated? I’ve met with the guy five times, hours upon hours, and he’s bested us every time. Kagerou won’t bend on the strike, which means we’d have to. Even though they’re the ones exploiting our people, Nee-chan.”

“Perhaps without his father’s oversight he’s come up with a plan that’s beneficial to both our planets. He communicated with me at great risk, Satoshi. Perhaps there’s more compassion in him than it seems.”

Satoshi doubted anyone from Kagerou, much less its Crown Prince, had any compassion for the miners from Akatsuki. They were only numbers on one of Sakurai Sho’s spreadsheets.

“When’s he coming?”

His sister laid a firm hand on his wrist. “You’re going.”

“To Kagerou?” he sniped at her. “No way.”

He and Mina had visited with their mother as children. For all their technological advances, for all their fancy houses and machines, the place felt so sterile. Akatsuki had its problems, but Satoshi loved his planet with a fierceness that was unshakable. Kagerou was artificial, from the faux sunlight to the oxygen circulating in their domes to the ugly green turf that they thought of as grass. 

Satoshi preferred his own home. The bobbing of his fishing boat on a choppy lake. Real dirt and grass under his bare feet. Sunlight baking his skin and fresh country air. Sure, the capital was more cramped. There was the smell of humanity everywhere but along with it came other smells. Baking bread and sizzling meat on a grill. The air purifiers in Kagerou’s cities sucked the life, the enjoyment, out of everything.

“You’ll go in the Kaisei and rendezvous with the Crown Prince’s ship. He assures me that he’s made up some lie about a vacation, but he’ll actually be meeting with you in orbit around Rakuen.”

Satoshi’s jaw dropped. “That’s…that’s…why in the stars would he want to meet _there_?”

“No patrols, I suspect,” Mina guessed.

Rakuen was another planet in their system, even more hostile to life than Kagerou. It lay several flight hours past the most distant of the asteroids belonging to Kagerou. Nobody was quite sure what lay below the mysterious green planet’s thick cloud cover these days. Evil aliens, said the books Satoshi had loved as a boy, but that was unlikely. Humans probably lived there or had at some point, back when their people had arrived in this solar system from the Old Planet. But that was centuries ago. 

Akatsuki had considered Rakuen as an alternate place of settlement decades earlier, a potential colony for their overburdened world, but it was too distant to be workable. Kagerou had sent science and exploration teams over the years, but most had not returned. The planet’s atmosphere messed with ships’ sensors, and they’d probably crashed on the surface. The ones that had returned spoke of ferocious beasts and rocky terrain unsuitable for farming. With all the inherent dangers, true exploration of Rakuen had been postponed indefinitely by both planets. Kagerou sent ships that way every once in a while, if only to observe from orbit if conditions had improved. Otherwise, Rakuen was left alone.

And now Sakurai Sho wanted to meet him there in secret?

“This doesn’t strike you as suspicious, Nee-chan?”

She sighed. “Of course it’s suspicious, but what choice do we have? He’s sent along coordinates for his planned orbit. He’ll be in that eyesore again.”

Satoshi rolled his eyes. The Crown Prince always flew to Akatsuki in his sleek little red ship, the hull tinted obnoxiously to match the Sakurai family’s royal colors. The Miyabi was outfitted like a miniature command center, since Sakurai had given Satoshi a tour of it at the capital’s space dock so he could brag about all the bells and whistles. All the latest in terms of shielding, offensive weaponry, and comfort.

Satoshi preferred his own ship, the Kaisei, that he’d inherited from his mother’s family. It wasn’t as grand as his sister’s royal vessel, the Hoshizora. Nor was it the fastest or the prettiest in Akatsuki’s fleet. It was almost a century old and a little clunky, but it was his. The Kaisei could zip him to his lake cabin in an hour or out into space and to Kagerou in fifteen. That was more than fast enough.

“How secret is this secret mission?” he asked. “Who knows about this?”

“On Sakurai’s end, I have no idea. Presumably he’ll have bodyguards, perhaps his chief of staff…although since he’s supposed to be on vacation, my guess is just the bodyguards or it would look suspicious to his father and the court.”

“Well, I’m taking Jun.”

Mina looked up, and Jun bowed reverently in his perfect Jun way. Even though he was Satoshi’s advisor, he was always far more deferential to Mina, even before she’d become queen. 

“Of course you’re taking Matsumoto-kun,” Mina scoffed. “Someone competent has to help you negotiate with the Crown Prince.”

Jun’s eyes sparkled with mirth, and Satoshi nearly slid off his seat in shock from the insult. He knew his sister trusted him, but she’d never stop teasing him. Even in front of her advisors. It was likely his own fault for being the court’s leading whiner at times.

He scowled at his sister, crossing his arms. “I’m taking Jun. Nino will fly me. And bodyguards?”

“Two. It can only look like you’re going on vacation, too,” she said. “In case King Shun sends envoys here and they report back that you recently flew off with escort ships the same day Sakurai Sho did. They’re not stupid. No, it’ll just be you in the Kaisei. We can’t afford for this to leak out. Not to Kagerou, and not to Akatsuki. This court officially negotiates only with his sovereign majesty, King Shun of Kagerou.”

He got to his feet, giving his jacket a little tug. “Well, perhaps it’s just as well that I vacation as often as I do. None of the envoys would be alarmed by my absence.”

She grinned at him. “Of course you’d twist that behavior of yours into a positive. My baby brother, the laziest prince in the galaxy. You leave tonight, and please for the love of the stars, behave yourself. If Sakurai’s willing to bend, we still have to be cautious. His promises mean nothing so long as his father reigns.” 

“I know that,” he said seriously. Even though her voice was light, he could sense how important this was. For her reputation as queen, for the future of their planet. They could not afford a war with their neighbor, and meeting Sakurai Sho in secret could easily be seen as a prelude to serious trouble. He’d never do anything that compromised the safety of his family or his people. His sister had to know that, but he tried to assure her anyhow. “Mina…I know.”

She beckoned him to her. As he stepped close, he knew whatever she was going to say was for his ears only. Not her advisors, not her guards, and not Jun. He leaned in, feeling her hand squeeze his shoulder and her breath tickle his ear.

“I fear this is a trap.”

“In what way?” he whispered in reply.

“If Sakurai is planning to turn on his father, he probably figures having Akatsuki as an ally will only help him. If he thinks to use our people to support him in a civil war, he is mistaken. And if negotiations seem to be heading in that direction…if he says he’ll improve conditions for our people only if we help him first, I want you to come directly home. Say whatever you need to say to break off the talks. They’ve used and abused our citizens for far too long, Satoshi, and I will not see them become a bargaining chip in Kagerou’s internal politics.”

The Sakurai Sho that Satoshi had met didn’t seem the type to start a rebellion. But then again, how well did Satoshi really know him? 

“I’ll be cautious,” he said. “I promise.”

She nodded, one quick wave of her hand dismissing him, none of her fear showing in her face. She was, as always, the picture of calm even though he knew how heavy her burdens were. Lake Kobayashi seemed very far away, but he had his orders. And he had his usual part to play. For once, his preference for avoiding court would serve him well.

He bowed to her with unnecessary deference, making sure her advisors heard no tremor in his voice even if he was more nervous than he’d ever been. 

“I live to serve you, my Queen.”

—

He slid into the unoccupied co-pilot’s chair, resting his polished black boots on top of the control console.

“Your Highness, may I remind you that this is the bridge, not a lounge,” came the ever flippant and casual voice of Ninomiya Kazunari, the pilot of the Kaisei.

The Ninomiya family were cousins of his, and though Nino thus had fairly aristocratic origins and could have operated grand estates or farms anywhere on Akatsuki, instead he had chosen his passion over his birthright. That passion was ships. Though Akatsuki’s defense fleet was small, Nino had been flying since he was old enough to join up. He’d flown orbiting patrols, small freighters, pleasure liners, and transport ships to the Kagerou asteroids. And for the last few years, he’d been Satoshi’s personal pilot.

This kept him out of space most days now, but Nino seemed to like tinkering with ships as much as he liked to fly them. With Satoshi spending most of his time either in the capital or at Lake Kobayashi, Nino had plenty of time to indulge himself at the capital’s space dock. But the mission to mysterious Rakuen had been enough to get Nino’s attention.

Nino was small and slim, but he had the confidence of a man twice his size. Well, at least when it came to flying. Even now as Satoshi refused to move his boots, Nino was probably monitoring a dozen screens and read-outs at once. All the gauges and dials that made Satoshi’s head swim. And despite that, Nino was also sitting cross-legged in his pilot’s chair, his ever-restless hands fiddling with some gadget or other from the ship he was building himself back at space dock.

Though Satoshi trusted his pilot and friend more than most people, the guy had learned his poor manners from the greatest of teachers - Matsumoto Jun. He and Jun both had that same way of saying “Your Highness,” that same twinkle in their eyes when they spoke to him, as though they shared some private joke Satoshi just wasn’t getting.

Nino looked over, sighing. “Bored already?”

He nodded. They’d been flying for more than seventeen hours and had almost a full day to go. “I finally ordered Jun to go to sleep.”

“You know he’s not sleeping,” Nino teased. “He’s probably writing a script for you so you don’t blow it with the Crown Prince.”

Satoshi narrowed his eyes. “You have so little faith in me.”

Nino’s smile was infectious. “I like your approach, it’s cute. Your stuttering and mumbling approach. The throw everything at your enemy and see what sticks approach.”

He crinkled his nose. “Sho-kun isn’t my enemy.” At least Satoshi didn’t think so, based on their previous encounters.

“The Crown Prince of Kagerou wants to meet you secretly at a forbidden planet. Just our two little ships and a handful of guards. Hours and hours, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from his daddy’s spy network. In my estimations, he’s planning to either bed you or kill you. Or both, if he’s kinky that way.”

Satoshi leaned across the aisle and smacked Nino’s arm. He and Jun both had seen right through him, discovering that Satoshi’s feelings toward Sakurai Sho were a bit complicated.

“It’s a political meeting, and Sho-kun is nothing if not professional.” Satoshi smacked Nino again for good measure. “And stop fucking around. The future of our planet is at stake, you know.”

“How do you think I feel, as a citizen of said planet?” Nino teased. “Considering Her Majesty put _you_ in charge of this mission.”

He glared at his pilot. “You better shut your mouth when I’m meeting with him. I’d like him to take me seriously for once.”

“Well, then perhaps you’d do well to start thinking of him as ‘Crown Prince Sho’ and not ‘Sho-kun,’ hmm?”

He blinked. “What?”

“You do realize that throughout this entire conversation you have referred to him as Sho-kun, right?”

Satoshi looked away, fingers twisting in the fabric of his slacks. They were both princes, of equal social status on their respective worlds. It was in their very first meeting that Sho had firmly broken with protocol. They’d shaken hands, and Sho had opened their negotiations with a gentle smile. 

“Is it alright if I call you Satoshi-kun?” he’d said, nearly knocking him back with the force of his confident smile. 

In the post-mortem of that first failure to get Kagerou to budge on the strike, Jun had presumed Sho’s friendliness was some psychological thing they taught at Keio Academy. Start negotiations on the friendliest of friendly terms. Get them to lower their guard, to look at you as a buddy rather than a political opponent. 

And then smack them in the face with all your statistics and logical arguments one after another.

Despite losing every single argument with Sakurai Sho, it was still hard not to think of him as “Sho-kun” now. After all, the guy had insisted on it, insidious as his intentions may have been. And besides, if Sho called him ‘Satoshi-kun,’ it would definitely be a sign of weakness for Satoshi to lower himself and call Sho ‘Your Highness.’

Not that he felt like explaining any of this to Nino.

“I’m going to be super professional,” he declared to the bridge of the Kaisei, the only response being the usual dual hums of the life support system and the ship’s engines.

Nino had turned back to the gadget in his lap, absent-mindedly tapping at something on the control console with his left hand (something with the auto-piloting mechanism, Satoshi assumed) before picking up his screwdriver and twisting at a loose part.

“I’m thirty-six years old, you know, and just because I don’t have a hundred scholarly degrees from Keio Academy doesn’t mean I’m clueless. He probably wants to meet me because he knows Kagerou’s fucked. He knows Akatsuki miners are their only hope. If they run out of kaenium, they’ll have to give up their precious climate control in their domes. Ah, can you imagine? Kagerou people with all their money having to use it to buy sweaters and extra blankets and a kotatsu for their houses? How embarrassing for them.”

“Clearly,” Nino agreed. “Crown Prince Sho is most certainly flying all this way to beg you to help end the strike so he doesn’t have to buy a kotatsu.”

He looked over, saw the smile on Nino’s face.

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Satoshi snitted, getting to his feet. Nino wiggled his fingers to bid him farewell for the night.

He left the bridge, walking through the Kaisei. It had been so long since he’d been out in space. He sometimes forgot it was a place he could go. Well, he didn’t forget so much as he rarely had much need to leave Akatsuki. He’d forgotten the chill. The emptiness. Gazing out one of the thick glass portholes, he saw nothing but black. Akatsuki was far behind them now, and Kagerou too. 

Rakuen. He’d never been so far from home. 

Tapping his fingers against the sturdy glass, he could feel the quiet but steady presence of Machida, one of the two bodyguards he’d been allowed to bring with him. The man was standing in the corridor, watching him. Likely wondering if Satoshi had what it took to help end the strike peacefully. Machida and the other bodyguard, the sleeping Maruyama, were two of only a handful of people in the entire universe that knew where he was going. That was kind of scary too.

As a member of the royal family, he usually had an entire staff traveling with him, even on his vacations. The only times he was really, truly alone were when he was out on the lake - and even then there were a few guards on boats of their own not too far away, making sure he wasn’t gobbled up by non-existent monster fish. 

But even with Machida behind him, with Maruyama asleep in one of the cabins, Jun likely worrying himself to death in another, and Nino on the bridge…even still he’d never felt this alone before.

He trusted that Nino would get him where he had to go. He trusted that Machida and Maruyama would protect him. He trusted that Jun would spend most of the following day distracting him with this and that report he had about mining conditions, about miners’ medical complaints, about all the different things he could remind Sakurai Sho as a way to try and get Kagerou to budge. 

He kept walking, boots heavy against the cold metal flooring in the corridor. Of course Sho’s ship, the Miyabi, had carpeting because why wouldn’t it? He grinned at the thought, heading for the small engine room at the rear of the ship. He sat down just inside the doorway, leaning forward with his forearms balanced against his thighs. He stared at the engine, listened to it thrum with steady strength.

It was kaenium-powered the same as all of Kagerou’s cities. But this kaenium came from Akatsuki itself. The amount needed to burn their way to Rakuen was massive, and unlike Sho and his carpeted red monstrosity of a ship, Akatsuki didn’t have a massive mining industry. Hardworking men and women had dug and dug and dug for the kaenium propelling the Kaisei right now. Men and women who depended on him, just like their counterparts on the mining colonies. He couldn’t let their efforts go to waste.

When he’d been negotiating on his sister’s behalf in the capital, it hadn’t felt this scary. He’d done his duty, he’d made his points (even though Sho-kun had countered them all). The strike had gone on. But this was different. This was a mission that could end very badly for all involved. If Sho’s father found out. If Sho’s motives weren’t as innocent as they appeared. And for once it was all resting on him. 

He stared at the Kaisei’s engine, praying he wouldn’t make a fool of himself. Praying that after thirty-six years of avoiding it that he could actually be tough. Authoritative. 

That like his sister, he was a leader, too.

—

He looked out the thick glass on the bridge, Jun at his side. Nino was prepping them for docking with the Miyabi.

A few hundred kilometers below lay Rakuen, the green swirling clouds lending the planet a rather soothing air. It wasn’t a sickly green but a vibrant one. The photos and vids he’d seen couldn’t quite capture the beauty of it. He knew that underneath the green were creatures unknown. Even this far up, Nino had noted that some of his read-outs seemed off, and he’d had to switch them to an orbit a bit further away to keep his gauges from screaming at him.

He wondered if Sho had ever been this far from home himself.

As the Kaisei eased into its approach, Satoshi stood up straighter at the first sight of the Miyabi. The Crown Prince’s ship was maybe half the size of the Kaisei, perhaps a little larger. The red tint to the ship wasn’t as noticeable out here, at least not until Nino got them a little closer.

The Miyabi’s pilot came over the intercom once the two ships were in range of each other, and Nino was more serious than Satoshi had ever seen him. Nino had changed out of his normal frumpy clothes and into the stiff, pressed blue uniform of the Akatsuki Space Guard, which lent him a very professional air. At Satoshi’s side, Jun was in a more formal outfit of his own, his CompTab held firmly in his hand as they listened to Nino and the other pilot babbling back and forth, a bunch of numbers that didn’t make too much sense but meant that the Kaisei would align with the Miyabi.

Sho’s ship had a special clamp that could keep the Kaisei attached, their airlocks joined so they could pass from ship to ship. While docked, the Kaisei would power down a bit and let the Miyabi do the driving. Nino wished it was the other way around, that he was controlling things, but Sho had requested the meeting and probably considered this part of his “hosting” duties.

Sho hadn’t spoken a word yet. They’d only heard from his pilot. Satoshi wondered how many men he had aboard. Was it more or less than the five people aboard the Kaisei?

If Sho had intended to kill him with a surprise sneak attack, he’d had plenty of opportunity already. The Miyabi could have fired on them as soon as they’d come into range. So Satoshi had exhaled in relief the closer they got. There was no real benefit to Satoshi being killed anyhow, Jun had figured. If Kagerou wanted to kick the Ohno family off the throne, to replace them with a family that would let them steamroll over the rights and freedoms of the Akatsuki people, they’d have gone after Mina. Since Mina had a child and heir, Satoshi wasn’t exactly a prime target for assassination.

But, Jun had warned him, Satoshi could still make for an interesting hostage. Kagerou could abduct him, hold him until the strike was stopped. Satoshi had been irritated at the thought of any of the striking miners giving in just because their prince had been taken hostage. “You underestimate all the hard work I’ve done to make you look good. They love you, Your Highness,” Jun had teased, cutting the tension that had dominated the long trip out to Rakuen.

The Kaisei groaned a little as the Miyabi’s clamp took hold of them, Nino still calling out numbers to his counterpart on the other ship. Satoshi rested a hand on the back of Nino’s seat, shutting his eyes and focusing on breathing. With a few more loud noises, a few more frightening quivers of his ship, the two ships were fully connected. Nino leapt up from his chair.

“Gotta make sure the airlocks have done a hard seal, Your Highness.”

Satoshi opened his eyes as Nino hurried off. He looked over at Jun, raising an eyebrow. Jun just chuckled. It might have been the most sincere “Your Highness” that Ninomiya Kazunari had ever uttered.

He turned, crossing his arms. Satoshi nodded to Maruyama. “Stay with Nino. In case they open their airlock and start firing at us.”

That only made Machida’s face grow more serious, and he took a step closer, lifting his laser pistol from the holster at his side.

Satoshi waved his hand dismissively. “Put it away. And keep it on the stun setting. We’ve come in peace, you know. It’s up to them to be equally well-behaved.”

Jun spoke up. “Do you want to review the pictures?”

Jun had what Satoshi deemed a “slideshow of misery” on his CompTab, pictures of miner homes on the asteroid Hikari 4, one of the oldest colonies. The housing hadn’t been refurbished in decades, the homes deep inside the asteroid carved into the rock with flickering lights, unreliable power, and old pipes for water. The units had been built to house four adults each, but some of them held eight, some ten with all the demand for kaenium. He still couldn’t shake the faces of his people, who deserved far better than they got. The people who needed him to take this seriously, to take their futures seriously.

“I don’t need to see them again,” he said quietly. 

He and Jun had spent the second half of the journey to Rakuen strategizing. This time Satoshi had numbers of his own to throw back in Sho’s face.

An alarm went off briefly. “It’s a good alarm!” Nino hollered from the other end of the ship. “Good alarm, don’t panic!”

He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t panicking.”

“We have a hard seal!” Nino called. “We’re all clear.”

With Machida leading the way and Jun behind him, Satoshi stayed calm, walking to the airlock passageway that was in between the passenger quarters and the engine room. Nino and Maruyama were standing there waiting, and Nino had his finger poised over a button on the control panel.

“On your command, we can open up.”

“Go ahead.”

Nino pressed the button, and the first of the two airlock doors slid open. After confirming on the control panel that they were safe, Nino activated the second door. As it slid open, Satoshi could see that the equivalent door on Sho’s side was opening at the same time. Machida and Maruyama moved in tandem, stepping in front of him. He cleared his throat, and they moved a little so he could actually see across and into the Miyabi.

Inside, he found Sakurai Sho, the Crown Prince of Kagerou, with only one guard standing directly behind him. Satoshi tried not to react at the sight of him. He was not as formally dressed as the group aboard the Kaisei, his long red jacket unbuttoned to reveal a simple white dress shirt and dark slacks tucked into his polished boots. 

Just as he had on all their previous meetings, he was wearing that cheerful smile of his along with the adornment that had caught Satoshi’s eye immediately. His left ear was pierced with a small but shining ruby stud that matched his family’s colors and made him look a bit younger than his thirty-four years. His dark hair fell across his brow, a bit longer than the last time they’d met. It made Satoshi’s stomach tie in knots. It would be much easier to negotiate with an ugly person, he thought, unable to completely tamp down his immaturity.

Sho settled his hands on his hips. “You made it.”

“I made it,” he replied.

“The chronometer on the Miyabi runs on Kagerou Royal time, the time in my capital. And according to said chronometer, it’s almost dinner time. On behalf of myself, my bodyguard Harada-san, and my pilot Kinoshita-san, I’d like to welcome you and your people aboard for a meal. It’s not as good as you might get back in the capital, since it’s freeze dried, but I do want to show my appreciation for you coming all the way out here.”

Satoshi stood his ground. “It was my sister’s understanding that you wanted to talk business.”

Sho’s smile widened. “It is, it is, but not tonight.” He gestured to one of the portholes beside him in his own airlock. “How often do you find yourself orbiting Rakuen, huh? All of our other meetings have been rather formal and stiff, Satoshi-kun, and I figure that’s why we’ve had such problems truly connecting.”

“I don’t feel like the setting has been the problem,” he replied.

Sho’s smile didn’t change. “I understand your hesitation, truly I do. And I know that much is at stake here. That’s why I’d like to postpone the difficulties until tomorrow, to meet with you this evening as equals and I hope as friends. To find a little more common ground without opening the topic of the mines.”

He looked aside, finding Nino. “Do we have enough fuel to idle here?”

“Your Highness, we have enough fuel for perhaps two dozen orbits and then the return trip. We can remain here for about 36 hours.”

Satoshi turned back, eyeing Sho warily. “We eat. We sleep. And then we negotiate. Do you feel that we have enough time?”

Sho was a little more serious when he spoke again. “I do.”

“Very well. Let us know when dinner is ready. Until then, I think my pilot could use a little time to check our systems.” He looked over. “Nino, shut the door.”

Before Sakurai Sho could say another thing, Nino activated the panel and the airlock door closed with a quick whoosh. Satoshi was already moving, heading for his cabin. Jun was at his heels, following him inside. He waved off the guards, pacing the floor while Jun closed the door.

“A friendly dinner?”

Jun’s voice was hesitant. “We came all this way, and he wants to postpone instead of jumping right into it. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either,” Satoshi replied, scratching the back of his head. “You think it’s a delaying tactic? That the Kagerou fleet is on its way to surprise us, kidnap me?”

Jun shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. If he wanted to take you hostage, he could have done that closer to Kagerou.”

“Right?” He stopped moving, staring at Jun straight on. “Maybe he thinks I’m really stupid, that I’ll drink too much tonight and be hungover tomorrow so I screw up the negotiations.”

“Are you planning to drink too much?”

He scowled. “Of course not.”

“Then maybe it’s something else entirely.”

“And what’s that?”

Jun leaned forward. “Maybe Nino’s right. Maybe he wants to seduce you, and the whole miner negotiations thing is a smokescreen.”

He gave Jun a rough shove, gritting his teeth. “I forbid you and Nino to talk about my love life ever again. Ever!”

“Of course, Your Highness. Nino and I are both fully assured of your integrity and were Sakurai Sho to proposition you, we know that you would instantly refuse.” Jun grinned. “You _would_ instantly refuse, yes?”

“When we get back home,” Satoshi spat, “remind me to fire you.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

He knew Jun’s teasing was only to put him at ease. And much as the thought of Sakurai Sho, Crown Prince of Kagerou, coming on to him made his heart race, he couldn’t let his lustful feelings get in the way of his duty. Perhaps once the strike was over…

“Call me when dinner is ready. Dismissed!”


	2. Chapter 2

They were gathered around a table in Sakurai Sho’s royal suite aboard the Miyabi. Although they dined only on heated meals in plastic trays, the quality was excellent. It was far better than the freeze-dried rations Satoshi had eaten on the journey out here. He wondered how many hours of kaenium power were used up in the Kagerou factories that had made these meals for deep space travel, the juicy steak and crusty bread that tasted almost as authentic as something from back home. How many Akatsuki citizen work hours were helping to feed him now?

Satoshi was seated across from Sho, who had his bodyguard Harada to his left and his pilot Kinoshita to his right. Both men were fairly quiet, obedient in a way Satoshi’s trusted staffers rarely were. But Sho dominated the talking anyhow, managing to completely ignore the reason Satoshi had come all this way. There was no mention of the asteroid mines, no mention of kaenium shortages on Kagerou.

Instead Sho had turned on his charm, discussing his visits to Akatsuki in glowing terms. Apparently after a few of his meetings with Satoshi, he’d toured around incognito, visiting several shrines and other points of interest before returning home. He had nothing but nice things to say about Satoshi’s home planet, and even if he sounded sincere, Satoshi knew he couldn’t fall for it.

If Sho liked Akatsuki so much, maybe he should work harder to support the citizens who left it behind to toil thanklessly in his stupid mines.

Satoshi spent most of the meal concentrating on eating, letting Jun smooth things over and Nino too. Sho had several questions for Jun, asking about how the Akatsuki civil service academy worked, offering comparisons with Kagerou’s. He encouraged Kinoshita to chat with Nino about engines, about flying. He asked after Satoshi’s brother-in-law Kenji, who had briefly studied off-planet in one of Kagerou’s universities as an exchange student. He even wanted to see photos of young Prince Yuta, Mina’s son, and Satoshi begrudgingly shared a few via his CompTab.

Everything he did and everything he said was friendly, curious, and kind. Satoshi almost wished he hadn’t agreed to the meal, that he instead had pushed to open negotiations right off the bat, to find out what the hell Sho even wanted with this secret meeting of his. He’d obviously had to work hard to keep this entire mission off his father’s radar, but he didn’t appear nervous at all. And that worried Satoshi all the more.

When Sho disappeared into his personal quarters and returned with a bottle of clear alcohol, Satoshi got to his feet. He couldn’t afford to drink, not when so much was at stake.

“It’s been a long journey out here, and my men need rest,” he said calmly. 

Sho actually looked disappointed. “Just a nightcap?”

“Thank you very much for the meal, Sho-kun. It was very kind of you. But we’ll be excusing ourselves now.”

“Satoshi-kun…”

“Thank you.”

Without another word, his guards, Nino, and Jun got to their feet, bowing respectfully to Sho and heading for the airlock. Sho nodded. “As you wish. Perhaps tomorrow after we’ve spoken. We might both need a drink then.”

“Good night.”

—

Later that night he sat in his quarters alone, unable to sleep, reviewing all the materials Jun had prepared for him. He practiced various arguments back and forth in his mirror, at least until he grew sick of looking at his own face.

He couldn’t go anywhere, tethered as he was to Sho’s ship until their negotiations ended. What was Sho’s big plan? And how did Satoshi and Akatsuki figure into it?

The little chime at his door went off, startling him a little. What did Jun want at this hour? He looked down at himself, sighing. He hadn’t changed out of his formal clothes after dinner, his shirt thoroughly rumpled and a sauce stain on the lapel of his jacket. They were hundreds of thousands of kilometers from laundry service. He got to his feet, shuffling over and pressing the button to slide open his door.

Where he expected to find Jun he instead found Sakurai Sho, and he straightened up. His clothes were equally mussed, his formal red jacket gone and his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, a few buttons undone. There was none of the proper Crown Prince standing in his doorway now, just a tired-looking man with a soft smile.

Satoshi could see a suspicious Maruyama standing guard just behind Sho. It was probable that Maruyama had asked Sho not to disturb him, but Satoshi knew very well that princes usually got their way.

“I don’t believe I gave you permission to come aboard,” Satoshi offered in greeting.

Sho leaned forward, resting his hand against the doorway. His wicked grin could have melted the ice caps of his stupid planet. Oh stars, had Jun and Nino been right? Was Sho coming to…coming to…

“Do you want to look at the planet with me?”

“Huh?”

Sho chuckled quietly, clearly not wanting to disturb Nino and Jun who were hopefully asleep in the passenger quarters nearby. “The view from my suite is the best one.”

Satoshi sighed. “Sho-kun, what’s this really about?”

Sho raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, when do you think we’ll be back out here again? We ought to take advantage.”

“My sister put everything she’s worked so hard for at risk to send me out here. I don’t have time to sightsee.”

Sho reached out a hand, presumably to pat his shoulder, and Satoshi watched Maruyama’s hand go to the holster around his middle.

“Maru, it’s okay…” he said sharply, ordering his guard to stand down. Sho wasn’t threatening him, he could feel it.

Sho froze, hand hovering in the air. Eventually he let it drop. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about what that looked like…”

Satoshi had a hard time believing him. Sho, who seemed to know everything. Sho, who for the first time since they’d met, looked almost sad. Almost…lonely.

He hadn’t come looking for sex, as Jun and Nino had teased. Perhaps he’d come to Satoshi as someone who might understand him better than anyone else. As an equal, at least in status. Perhaps even as a friend.

How much pressure was Sho under, as Kagerou’s heir? And if he really was planning to break with his father on the Akatsuki miners, what would it mean for him? Satoshi knew that Sho had younger siblings. Would he be replaced? Branded a traitor? For all that Satoshi disagreed with him, Sho was intelligent and knowledgeable. He doubted there was anyone who knew Kagerou policy and procedure as well as Sho did. And yet he was risking it all to stand here, in Satoshi’s doorway, orbiting a distant planet thousands of kilometers from home.

“I’ll come look, alright?”

Sho nodded, stepping back, and Satoshi followed him to the airlock, Maruyama behind him. When they got to the point where the ships were joined, he turned around, looking at his guard. He was obviously entitled to bring Maru with him, to have Maru standing by while he entered Sho’s private quarters. It would be a breach of protocol to go without him. It could all be a trap, Sho’s bodyguard inside waiting to tie him up, make Satoshi a hostage.

But why would Sho risk that when he was clearly outnumbered, when Satoshi had twice as many people on his side? Nino wasn’t a bodyguard, but he was military trained. He could hold his own. And Jun knew which end of a laser pistol to hold even if he was a mere advisor.

“Maru, stay here.”

“But Your Highness…”

“I understand your misgivings,” Sho said softly, moving to remove the ruby stud from his ear. It glimmered in his palm as he held it out. That damn earring was probably worth enough kaenium to power Kagerou’s royal capital for a year. “Take it. Take it as proof that I mean your prince no harm.”

Maruyama let Sho drop the ruby into his hand. Jun wasn’t going to like this when he found out, but for the first time, Satoshi had seen doubt in Sho’s face. He’d seen Sho’s defenses lowered. Perhaps he could turn this to his advantage ahead of the morning’s negotiations.

Maruyama stayed back on the Kaisei side of the airlock as Satoshi followed Sho onto the Miyabi. Nothing happened as they walked through, turning the corner back to where they’d just been for dinner hours earlier. Sho’s bodyguard Harada was standing outside the door to Sho’s suite with the same solemn calm he’d had on display all evening.

“We’re going to enjoy the view,” Sho explained. “And we are not to be disturbed.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Harada stepped aside, and Satoshi followed Sho inside. The door sealed shut quietly behind them. Sho did a lot more traveling aboard his royal vessel than Satoshi did aboard his, so his quarters were decorated far more elaborately. There was a large bed in the center of the room with red blankets and the family’s crest stitched onto both the top coverlet as well as the white pillowcases. 

There was a massive CompStation with a large screen where Sho could work. He had a private bathroom, a walk-in closet full of more red jackets and more military-style uniform coats. Sakurai Sho was Kagerou’s royal family on the move, heading from dome to dome to give speeches and check in with local aristocrats. He practically lived on the Miyabi, as far as Satoshi could tell. 

Hidden behind a heavy set of red curtains was the viewing window Satoshi knew Sho had been referring to. Unlike the small round portholes on the Kaisei, Sho’s personal quarters had a wall-to-wall window, thick tinted glass. Satoshi had only seen it from the ground, where Sho’s view had been restricted to the inside of the Akatsuki space dock. As Sho pulled the curtains inside, Satoshi took in a breath. Though the view from the bridge of the Kaisei had been impressive, this was stunning. Floor-to-ceiling, all there was to see was the brightness of Rakuen. Sho tapped in a code on the panel beside the window and the pinkish tint vanished, revealing Rakuen in all its green glory.

Unable to help himself, he stepped forward, boots dragging along Sho’s fluffy carpeted floor. He knew the glass was thick to withstand the temperature shifts that came from entering and exiting a planet’s atmosphere, but it was so clear. So absolutely clear that he felt almost like he might walk through, fall down to the planet below. Physics and logic became afterthoughts.

“Amazing,” he mumbled, nervously putting his hand to the cold glass, relieved with the confirmation that he wasn’t going to tumble out of the Miyabi and into the vacuum of space.

Sho was still at the panel, his expression serious. “I’ve invested my entire inheritance to solve this problem of ours, Satoshi-kun.”

“Yeah?” he muttered in reply, not really hearing Sho when there was so much beauty to look at kilometers below.

“And one of the labs I was working with has finally made a definitive confirmation. A process by which the same kaenium ore we mine could be augmented chemically to yield twice as much as normal. The current extraction process is cumbersome and outdated. With this discovery, the entire mining industry might be improved. The money saved could go to the betterment of worker lives…”

He turned, Sho’s words sinking in. “Wait, what? Are you serious?”

Sho’s face was still solemn. “I’m quite serious.”

“Why…why would you tell me that now? We’re not supposed to meet until the morning.”

“I thought I owed it to you, man to man. After all the hours we’ve spent together where I’ve had to be so harsh. Where I had to act like I didn’t care about all those people. I do care, Satoshi-kun, as if they were my own citizens. They work for us, they work so hard for us and still we treat them like numbers. Not humans. I’ve been working with scientists on this project for many years, even before the strike. As I said, I really have invested my entire inheritance to fix this problem. It’s only now that I finally have definitive results I can use…”

Satoshi was confused, even as his heart was leaping in joy with Sho’s news. And with the knowledge that Sakurai Sho wasn’t the heartless man he’d originally thought he was. Oh stars, if Kagerou could power itself on half of what it was currently extracting, the miners wouldn’t have to be overworked. Overcrowded. Underpaid.

He needed Jun. Jun would know what to say, Jun would know what to do with this information. But all Satoshi could do was ask questions, keep Sho talking.

“Why arrange all this behind your father’s back? Why come to Akatsuki with this discovery before telling your father?” 

Sho took a breath. “Because I know that my father won’t act based on mere lab results. Would your sister? I doubt it. We need proof, real proof from a functioning kaenium mine that the new extraction and processing method is sound. I can’t authorize a test on any of the Kagerou mining operations. With the strike, our reserves are so depleted we can’t risk it not working on the ore that’s already been extracted. And obviously, with the strike, we don’t have the workers to dig for more.”

Satoshi narrowed his eyes. He could hear Mina’s voice, Mina’s warnings ringing in his ears. Mina reminding him that if Sho’s negotiations put Akatsuki in an awkward position, it was Satoshi’s duty to stop them. To stop immediately and back off.

“You have a planet full of people too, Sho-kun,” Satoshi reminded him. “Get your own people to do the mining.” He took a step closer, hands on his hips in irritation, desperately trying to keep from saying anything nastier than he should. But it was hard to hold his tongue after all these fruitless meetings and negotiations. “Or is that beneath you Kagerou folks? Putting in a day’s labor?”

He clearly had no right to say such a thing. As a prince, Satoshi had never worked in a dangerous kaenium mine. 

But he _had_ worked. 

He’d worked on fishing boats before, and he’d spent the summers of his teen years on farms, getting sunburned with the common people as he planted crops and picked fruit. Mina had too. His father may not have been the strongest leader Akatsuki had ever had, but he’d refused to allow his children to grow up without having at least some experience with the land, among their people. Satoshi knew the value of work, even if he’d spent the last few years as more of a diplomat than anything else.

Sho frowned. Perhaps Satoshi had earned his very first point in their hours of arguing, saying something he’d wanted to say for years and right to the Crown Prince of Kagerou’s face.

He stood there, breathing heavily after getting so worked up, waiting for Sho to respond. Satoshi had an idea what Sho was going to propose. He’d want to negotiate with Mina, to have one of the mines on Akatsuki test his science project for him in secret. And once there was proof of success in a working mine, Sho could then go to his father with the results. It was dangerous. It was ridiculous, quite frankly. And what did it mean for the people suffering because of the strike that was still ongoing? 

But this wasn’t their official meeting. They still had a whole day in Rakuen orbit to talk more about it. 

“Sho-kun?”

Sho held up a hand, his face seeming even more pale than usual. “Wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what?”

Sho’s face grew panicked, and the look of it was so foreign that Satoshi almost laughed at him.

“Something’s wrong.”

And that was when they heard the alarm. The alarm that Nino had described earlier that day as the “good” alarm. It was something to do with the hard seal. The airlock…

“No!” Sho shouted, racing away from the panel by the window and to the door to his quarters. He tapped the button again and again but it wouldn’t open. “Harada! Harada!”

Satoshi nearly stumbled as he felt the screeching of metal. The same noise that he’d heard when the two ships had joined earlier that day. But now it sounded like the Miyabi had released the clamp holding the Kaisei to it. 

“What the fuck is going on?” he yelled at Sho, standing at the doorway with him. “What’s happening to my ship?”

“I don’t know!” Sho yelled in panic. The calm, collected, perfect Crown Prince had disappeared…Satoshi couldn’t recognize him any longer. He pounded again and again on the door. “Harada!”

The ship-wide intercom sounded, and Satoshi could suddenly hear Nino’s frightened voice coming over it.

“Miyabi, this is the Kaisei. What’s going on? Why have you disengaged? Miyabi, come in!”

Satoshi exhaled a breath, if only because he knew that Nino was alive. The two ships had decoupled, but the Kaisei was still functioning. The airlocks had disengaged, the ships had separated, but there’d been no decompression. The Kaisei was okay, the Kaisei was going to be okay…

“Harada!” Sho screamed, and this time Satoshi joined him, pounding on the door. “Harada, I order you to open this door right now!”

“Miyabi, come in. Please confirm the safety of Prince Satoshi,” Nino demanded over the intercom.

There was a brief moment of interference and then Jun was speaking.

“This is Matsumoto Jun of the Akatsuki royal court. We demand that you respond regarding your sudden and dangerous action. If you do not, we will consider your behavior to be an act of war. You have abducted a member of the royal family during a neutral meeting based on good faith, and you will be held accountable for it. Miyabi, please respond.”

When Sho leaned his head on the door, giving up on his shouts and simply pounding his fist against it, Satoshi backed away.

He took a deep breath as he reached inside his coat for the secret pocket stitched within it. He tore the button loose, pulling out the small laser pistol he kept within on Jun’s orders. He’d been stupid. Stars, he’d been so stupid to trust Sho. 

A new scientific discovery? Of course it was a lie. Of course this was all a lie. He could already see the beautiful green view of Rakuen shifting. Miyabi was coming about, and surely she’d have her weapons drawn, aimed directly at the Kaisei.

He pointed the pistol directly at Sho. “If you fire on my people, I’ll kill you right here.”

Sho stumbled back, raising his hands, shaking his head. “Satoshi-kun, I didn’t…I don’t know what’s happening!”

“You fucking liar! You’re a liar! You don’t give a shit about Akatsuki, admit it! But I will not be made a fool! You hear me?” He adjusted the dial on the pistol’s barrel, shakily turning it from stun to a burst strong enough to kill. “If you set this all up just to take me hostage, then do it. But you will let my people fly back to Akatsuki safely. You will let them go!”

Sho had tears in his eyes, was still denying it. “Satoshi-kun, I swear. I swear to you,” he said, voice quivering. “I don’t know what’s…”

And that was when the artificial gravity in Sho’s quarters shut off. 

He was moving, rising from the floor, and he nearly lost the pistol. Sho’s feet left the ground too, his hands scrambling for something to hold on to and failing. In seconds the two of them were floating, weightless. The pillows floated up off the bed, the bottles of liquor on a cart in the corner of the room rising. Anything not bolted down was in motion.

It took every bit of concentration Satoshi had to keep a hold on his weapon, although with Sho floating and himself floating, it was difficult to keep his aim steady.

He’d never seen Sho look frightened before, clinging to one of the air grates lodged on the wall near the doorway. Seeing that, Satoshi’s rage was quickly replaced with a more surprising feeling. The need to protect him. The pistol wavered in his hand. Harada and the pilot, Kinoshita…they had to know that Satoshi and their Crown Prince were both in here.

Which meant that Satoshi might not be the target…

When the door opened, Satoshi could still hear Jun and Nino’s panicking voices over the intercom, demanding that he be returned. The gravity problem was ship-wide, not just isolated to Sho’s quarters. The painfully slow, noisy clomp of gravity boots came down the corridor, and they were joined by Sho’s bodyguard, Harada. He had a laser pistol of his own, but his aim was true thanks to the special magnetized boots. Even through the Miyabi’s thick carpets, he was able to keep from floating.

“Harada,” Sho demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Your Highness, a member of the House of Councillors suspected you of treasonous behavior. I was tasked with determining what your plans might be and to act as my conscience dictates.”

Harada didn’t even bother to look in Satoshi’s direction, which allowed him to lower his arm, hide his hand and pistol in his coat pocket even as the movement sent him twisting about unsteadily. 

Sho raised his hands, betrayal evident in his eyes. Apparently, it had been treason for Sho to tell Satoshi his plans, to openly plot behind his father’s back, even if it had been nothing more than funding scientific inquiries. Satoshi wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Sho’s quarters were bugged, the bodyguard and pilot waiting for Sho to admit his plans out loud.

“Harada, does my father know?”

“No, Your Highness. My orders were to prove your guilt or your innocence before the King was to be notified.”

Satoshi could see Sho’s tears floating in the air around him, drifting away from his face. It seemed that Satoshi had been wrong. Sho had been telling the truth. About the mining, about the new discoveries he had made. But at what cost?

Sho’s voice was shaking. “You will restore normal gravity parameters to the ship, and you will allow Prince Satoshi to return to the Kaisei.”

Harada adjusted the dial on his laser pistol. “I’m afraid I cannot take orders from traitors. I feel that I have failed in my duties all these years. It’s best we die together to keep from bringing shame on the royal house of Sakurai.”

“Harada, wait…” Sho protested, eyes widening.

Satoshi raised his pistol and fired just as Harada did, the kickback from the weapon in zero-g pushing him all the way back until he smacked into the cold glass window. He heard Sho cry out, and Satoshi fired again. This time the glass at his back kept his aim steadier, and he watched Harada drop back with a scream, the boots likely keeping his legs in place while his body flew back from the force of Satoshi’s fire.

He could see the red spray of blood floating all around the cabin, globules matching the Sakurai family colors. How much was Harada’s? How much was Sho’s?

Suddenly, Jun and Nino’s voices were silenced. The intercom was cut off. What replaced their voices sent a shiver down Satoshi’s spine.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. One hundred twenty seconds remaining.”

Kinoshita, the pilot…

He’d likely be slowed down by the magnetic boots too, if he was wearing them. That would give Satoshi the advantage he needed. He didn’t bother to call out to Sho, instead using his own feet to kick off the glass and propel him across the room to the open doorway. He desperately tried to ignore the unnatural way Harada had fallen, his lower legs all but glued to the floor because of the boots, his body flung back and hovering, sprays of red flooding the air around him.

Satoshi drifted through it, feeling droplets land on his face as he grabbed hold of the doorway.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. One hundred ten seconds remaining.”

Using the doorway for leverage, he pushed off and floated down the corridor to the bridge. To his surprise, he found the quiet Kinoshita-san floating in the air himself, holding a laser pistol to his temple.

Satoshi clung to the doorway, holding out his own weapon.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. One hundred seconds remaining.”

“Deactivate it,” Satoshi ordered. “Deactivate it, I said!”

“I have participated in a treasonous act,” the pilot said, his face solemn as Harada’s had been even as he fired at his prince. “I must atone for bringing shame on the royal house of Sakurai.”

“Wait…wait!” Satoshi screamed, but the pilot was set in his decision.

The shot echoed in the small bridge, followed by a splattering sound that turned his stomach.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Ninety seconds remaining.”

Satoshi hauled himself onto the bridge, pushing Kinoshita’s floating body out of the way. Oh stars, how had it all gone so wrong so quickly? Clinging to the pilot’s seat, he saw that Kinoshita had smashed the intercom. There was no way to get a message to Nino in time, no way to tell them what had happened. He scanned the dials and gauges, desperate for something that looked familiar. Why had he never paid any attention when Nino had tried to teach him?

“Think, think, think!” he cursed himself, flinging the now-useless laser pistol out of his hand. It thumped against the glass and remained floating.

He recognized one gauge. Thrusters. Forward or reverse. He looked down, finding the lever he needed that matched the one Nino was always using.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Eighty seconds remaining.”

He pulled it back as far as it could go, and he felt the effects immediately. The Miyabi shot backwards, and he clung to the pilot’s seat. Out the glass, he could see the Kaisei growing smaller and smaller.

“Don’t follow. Don’t follow me, Nino,” he mumbled uselessly.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Seventy seconds remaining.”

He turned, finding Kinoshita still floating in the red air behind him. The interior of the Miyabi matched the exterior now, all too well.

“Get out of my way!” he shouted, pushing the corpse aside as he kicked off from the pilot’s seat, hurrying back down the corridor.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Sixty seconds remaining.”

Harada was still bent in that strange position, and Satoshi pushed his way back into Sho’s quarters. He followed the trail of red to Sho’s bathroom, finding Sho still leaving bubbles of blood in his wake. The shot had struck him somewhere on his side, the white fabric of his dress shirt soaked through.

“Sho-kun, it’s me.”

Sho was hovering near a panel on the wall, holding onto the curtain rod of his shower, stretching his fingers out. Satoshi used the doorway to propel himself forward. “Kinoshita?” Sho asked, gritting his teeth.

“Dead.”

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Fifty seconds remaining.”

“I didn’t know how to turn it off,” Satoshi admitted.

“It’s okay,” Sho mumbled. “I’m the only one that knows this code. Well, Harada knew it…”

“Tell me.”

“572910…”

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Forty seconds remaining.”

“…9335198,” Sho finished, and Satoshi followed his instructions.

A panel in the wall of the bathroom slid open, lights turning on inside to reveal an escape pod with four seats just through a small airlock. Satoshi hurried inside, reaching out for Sho’s hand and pulling him into the pod. For all that the Miyabi’s design had annoyed him before, he supposed he couldn’t complain now.

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Thirty seconds remaining.”

As soon as the door sealed shut behind them, Sho hit a bright red button to the side of the door. With a whoosh of air, the pod pressurized on its own, artificial gravity restoring itself. They collapsed to the floor in a heap, the feeling of weightlessness vanishing in an instant. Sho groaned heavily, landing on top of him. The droplets of blood from Sho’s wound that had been floating fell and splattered on the floor around them.

Satoshi pushed him off quickly. “We have to get away. Right now.”

Body shaking a bit with adrenaline, he hauled Sho into one of the seats, buckling him in. He snapped his fingers, seeing that Sho was a bit woozy. “Sho-kun, how do I launch it?”

Sho blinked, hand drifting to his side, covering his wound. “It’s voice activated. Just…just hit that yellow one right…right there…”

“Auto-destruct sequence activated. Twenty seconds remaining.”

He hit the button on the control panel in the center of the circular pod. He then got into the seat next to Sho, buckling the harness over himself and letting out one last prayer that the sensors on the Kaisei were good enough to realize that the Miyabi was about to blow. That no matter what, Nino would keep the Kaisei out of the line of fire.

“Disengage. Authorization Sakurai 0125.”

And with a jolt, they were moving. The strength of it flung Satoshi forward against the harness, a pain blossoming in his chest that felt almost like being kicked in the ribs. Looking over, he could see that it had made Sho lose consciousness. Either that or his injury had finally knocked him out.

He looked over at the control panel, holding tight to the harness. There was an intercom! He stretched out his hand, straining and straining. His finger managed to brush against the switch.

“Nino! Nino, it’s me! You have to…”

A shockwave hit the little pod from the opposite direction, slamming Satoshi back into the seat. He groaned when his head hit the back of the unit hard. The Miyabi had probably just exploded, not that there was any sound in space to give them a warning. 

Ears ringing, he looked over and saw that Sho’s head was still down, jostling as the pod rumbled along, his chin bumping repeatedly against his chest. 

As Satoshi squinted out through the small porthole in the side of the pod, all he could see was green. The pod ought to have been able to stay in orbit, but the shockwave from the Miyabi’s destruction had sent them on a different path. 

Rakuen’s pull was too strong now. The Kaisei wouldn’t be able to retrieve them. 

The intercom crackled with static. “Satoshi!”

“Jun! Jun, it’s me!” he shouted, the entire pod shaking as they plummeted down toward the planet below.

“…happened…where…Satoshi!”

“Jun! Nino! Nino!” he shouted uselessly. “Go back! You don’t have enough fuel. Go back and get help! Can you hear me? Go back and get help!”

The static took over. There wouldn’t be any further contact, and that realization made him tighten his grip on the harness until it was digging into his palms. Nino and Jun were smart, he knew. They had enough fuel to orbit Rakuen for another day, but they’d be stupid to try it. They’d never get a clear reading on where the pod landed, not with the interference from the atmosphere. And Nino and Jun wouldn’t be foolish enough to waste the kaenium they needed to get back to Akatsuki to go looking for him at random.

No, they’d go back. They’d go back and get help. 

What this meant for Akatsuki, for Kagerou…Satoshi had no idea. He didn’t envy them, having to fly back and try to explain to Mina what had happened. They probably had no idea what had really gone down. By all accounts, Satoshi had been abducted and then the Miyabi had blown up. 

Maru had watched Satoshi walk away, had accepted Satoshi’s order, the breach of protocol. Harada and Kinoshita, spying on Sho…and for how long? If they hadn’t taken advantage of Sho inviting Satoshi to his quarters, would they have opened fire during negotiations the following day? Would Jun and Nino, Machida and Maruyama have paid the price?

What would Jun do? What would Mina do? Would they contact Kagerou? Wouldn’t they have to, given that their Crown Prince was in danger? Kagerou had better ships to launch a rescue, but wouldn’t that compromise Mina’s position? 

If the Crown Prince’s own bodyguard had tried to murder him for what he perceived to be treason, to let him die instead of bringing shame to the royal family, how would Kagerou react to Akatsuki’s private meeting with Sho? Things had just gone from bad to worse and far beyond that to an impossible situation.

“Nee-chan, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, knowing that nothing would be the same. 

Even if Mina managed to mount a rescue mission, Sho’s “vacation” would start to look suspicious if he was gone too long. Satoshi was known for his vacations. Sakurai Sho the workaholic, Sakurai Sho who presided over the Kagerou House of Councillors, probably wasn’t. Mina would have to act fast if she acted at all. But Akatsuki had never sent science or exploratory missions to Rakuen before. He didn’t even know if they had the ships for it.

He looked over, still seeing nothing but green out the glass. He had no idea what angle they were at, what course they were on. Whatever had been programmed into the pod’s computers had likely been thrown off by the Miyabi’s shockwave. He shut his eyes, the pod on an unstoppable course now. 

He could only hope that it didn’t need Sho’s voice to activate a parachute.

—

Though the ride down had been the bumpiest of Satoshi’s life, the landing wasn’t as rough as it might have been. As soon as they were stable, Satoshi looked out the glass, only to see red.

He scowled at the sight of it. Even the damn parachute was tinted with the Sakurai red. Unbuckling from the harness, he slid out of the seat with shaky legs, moving to the control panel. He squinted at all of the various read-outs. A silent alarm was going off inside the pod, the regular lights having shut off at some point during their descent and replaced with tiny emergency ones. The inside of the pod was bathed in red light as the alarm let out its soundless warning.

With a few tentative taps on the console, he was able to confirm that available air in the pod cabin was currently at 88 percent. That the air outside was breathable, too. That the outside temperature was almost comparable to Akatsuki, although closer to Akatsuki in the early days of winter. Pushing the button for the intercom revealed only static as he suspected.

He sighed, looking across the large array of switches and dials and levers for something that might be able to send out a beacon, something that could alert rescue ships from either of their planets that they’d crashed here, that they were both still alive.

Satoshi’s eyes widened in alarm. They were both still alive, right?

He hurried over, kneeling down in front of Sho, tapping his cheek. His chest was slowly rising and falling. He was alive, he was breathing, thank the stars. 

“Sho-kun? Hey Sho-kun, are you alright?”

He was rewarded with a heavy, pained groan, and he couldn’t help but smile. Better a groaning Sho than a dead one. If Satoshi hadn’t shot Harada in time, the bodyguard’s aim might have been much better. Sliding Sho’s hand out of the way, he tugged at Sho’s shirt, buttons scattering as he pulled it open. His pale torso seemed mostly uninjured, Satoshi’s hand trying to turn him a little to find the actual injury. He couldn’t quite ignore the firm muscles of Sho’s abdomen, how solid and warm he felt under his fingertips.

There was a harsh laser burn on Sho’s side. It had broken skin, enough to make him bleed as heavily as he had back on the Miyabi, but it was more of a graze than anything that seemed life-threatening. Not that Satoshi was a doctor, but he’d worked on farms. He’d seen injuries from equipment, and the wound on Sho’s side was not as awful as some of those had been.

“Sho-kun, it’s me. Satoshi. I’m gonna need you to help me out here.”

He looked up, watching as Sho lifted his head just a little, hair falling in his eyes. “Satoshi-kun,” he whispered, sounding horrible.

And no wonder, Satoshi thought. His own bodyguard and pilot had just tried to kill him, to blow him up and a prince of Akatsuki right along with him.

“Sho-kun, where can I find a med-kit on board this thing? We need to patch you up before you get an infection.”

“Panel…panel on the other side of your seat. Inside.”

He got up, locating the panel in question. It was labeled ‘Medical,’ which ought to have been obvious. There was a number pad beside it. “Needs a code.”

“All…all the codes within the pod are the same. 4-4-8-7-2.”

“4-4-8-7-2.”

The panel slid open with a quiet hiss, revealing several small packages and cases. Everything seemed properly sealed, even after the rough journey down to Rakuen. He dug through, letting other things fall to the floor of the pod. Painkillers, bandaging, nausea meds. He found a case labeled “Wound Care” and tugged it out, breaking the seal. Inside was a rather shocking array of supplies from the most elementary to the most advanced. For once, Satoshi was glad that Kagerou was so wealthy.

There was a needle and thread, a pair of scissors. And then there was also a laser-powered tool Satoshi recognized. It was one he’d seen a doctor use on him before when he’d gotten a cut on his face several years back. His wound had been deep, but the tool the doctor used had sealed him up, leaving him only with a small scar on his cheek.

But it had hurt more than the initial injury had.

He dug around for some sort of numbing agent, not having much luck. Most of the medical terms on the different pharma packages didn’t sound familiar, and he didn’t want to pick the wrong thing. He’d just have to do without, lest Sho keep bleeding all over the place. Well, it was better than sewing Sho back together with a needle and thread. The tool would cauterize the wound, and the various medicines and creams Satoshi actually could recognize would keep him from getting an infection.

The only problem now was determining how it worked. It was heavy and cold in his hand, and it had a dial with various settings. 

“Hey Sho-kun, I know you’ve got a bunch of degrees. Did you study medicine too by any chance?”

“No.”

He couldn’t really do much with Sho slumped in the chair, so he put his arms around him, tugging him up. Sho groaned in reply, not putting up a fight. This wasn’t exactly the most sterile place, but he had little choice. Sho’s wound was still bleeding, and if he lost any more blood he’d be in serious trouble. It wasn’t like the medical cabinet had pouches of blood on ice for transfusions.

Once he’d gotten Sho’s shirt all the way off of him, not wanting the fabric to be fused to the wound with the laser, he gently eased Sho to the floor of the pod, keeping him on his side so he could see the full extent of his injury. He reached for one of the little kits full of antibacterial wipes, tearing a few open and doing his best to clean the area around the wound. Sho whimpered, shaking a little on the floor.

“You think that hurts,” Satoshi mumbled. “Here, keep your arm out of the way.”

He took another look at the laser tool. The settings went all the way up to five. From the looks of Sho’s injury, it couldn’t possibly be worth a five. Maybe a five was something like a limb about to fall off. Satoshi felt a little woozy at the thought of that, swallowing before setting it to the ‘2’ setting.

Kneeling before Sho, he rested a hand on his hip to try and keep him steady, moving the tool until he had it hovering a few inches over Sho’s body.

“You can shout all you need to. It’s perfectly manly for you to do so.”

“Shut up,” he replied with a soft chuckle. Well, at least Sho could still find the strength to laugh at their crazy situation. “Just do it.”

Guilt tore at him when Sho’s screaming started echoing throughout the pod. To Sho’s credit, he kept remarkably still, body hot and quivering under Satoshi’s hand where he held onto him. After a few passes of the tool over his skin, Satoshi turned it off. He remembered the slightly burning smell from the time his own doctor had fixed him up. This was a little more intense, and he tried not to gag.

But now where there’d been the harsh burn from the laser pistol, the small cuts and abrasions where the blast had broken his skin, there were tiny criss-crossing white scars. His skin was pink, but even that would fade soon enough. He patted Sho’s hip, feeling the soft fabric of his slacks.

“Very manly,” he teased. “I’m proud of you.”

Digging through the rest of the supplies, he found an anti-bacterial cream, smoothing a generous amount over the wound before bandaging him up.

“I don’t want to get off the floor,” Sho mumbled, turning over onto his back and shutting his eyes. 

Satoshi tried not to stare at his bare skin, the muscles of his arms. He was kind of glad Sho hadn’t been shot near his crotch. He left Sho where he was, getting back to his feet.

“Do you know if there’s a rescue beacon on here? How do we activate it?”

It took a few moments before Sho responded. “Once the parachute opens, it’s supposed to trigger a beacon automatically. You’re looking for a gauge on the upper left of the console.”

Looking quickly, he found one that had a small, pulsing green light. “Found it. It’s blinking. Blinking’s good, right?”

“Yes, blinking is good.”

He exhaled in relief before looking down, seeing Sho lying there, his middle wrapped in bandages, a hand over his eyes. Probably more vulnerable than he’d ever been. Well, Satoshi could understand it. But someone had to take charge here, and though most of the other meetings they’d had together had been easily dominated by Sho, this was a different matter altogether.

He clapped his hands.

“Okay. I’m going to check our supplies.”

Sho said nothing, but there was no doubt he was still in shock. 

Satoshi left him where he was, walking around him as he needed to in order to punch the code into each of the wall panels, to examine just what Kagerou’s Crown Prince had available to him in his escape pod. Now that Sho’s health crisis was seemingly handled, he took an inventory of what else was available to them. Unlike the fancy freeze-dried meals aboard the Miyabi, the ration packs he found in the pod were mostly protein bars, vitamins and supplements. Nothing that required cooking or heating. 

The pod had been prepped for four people, so he took that into consideration. With just the two of them, it meant whatever had been stored would last them twice as long. Which was a very good thing, he realized. Nino and Jun wouldn’t make it back to Akatsuki for more than a day. And then it would be up to Mina to come up with a solution. Whenever that solution was determined, any rescue operation mounted came with that same travel time. The Kaisei wasn’t the fastest, but ships still needed a full day to get to Rakuen. And that was without the time needed to get the ships ready to fly, which could honestly take days.

He counted and recounted. He counted the food. He counted the bottled water. If anything was essential right now, it was the water. He opened the tight seal on one of the bottles, drinking some and nodding. Still fresh. None of the seals on any of the bottles were broken, thankfully. 

After assessing everything, he determined that they had enough food to last a week and enough water to last two. Since ships like the Miyabi rarely traveled this far from home, it was a wonder they had that much to work with. If Sho’s ship had crashed somewhere on his own planet, he’d have been rescued within hours. Satoshi doubted the Kaisei’s escape pods were as well-equipped.

But at the same time, would Mina be able to rally and send help in a week? Given all the political considerations. And more importantly, the technological ones. What if the ships came and the atmosphere made it impossible? What if they couldn’t be found? 

It was only then that reality sunk in for good. Sho had come to him in the middle of the night, and then everything had gone to hell. He hadn’t slept yet. Escaping the Miyabi, attending to Sho’s injuries, assessing their supplies…he’d been running on pure adrenaline. All that was left now was fumes. Exhaustion hit him almost as hard as the shockwave from the exploding ship.

He’d found a pair of blankets in another supply bin, and he took them out. It had to be uncomfortable on the floor for Sho, but Satoshi could tell that Sho wasn’t feeling well enough to move yet. Without words he crouched down, tucking the blanket around him. 

With the second blanket in hand, he settled back in the seat, covering his body. The warmth of the material was surprising considering how thin it was, but then he remembered Kagerou with their artificial everything. Living under their domes. They probably didn’t handle the cold as well, did they? He settled the harness back over himself, buckling it over the blanket. As silly as it probably looked, he felt far more secure. 

He gave in to sleep within minutes.


	3. Chapter 3

A strong hand on his shoulder woke him. 

Sho was on his feet, looking into his face with a slightly shy smile. “Um, I need to go.”

Satoshi blinked the sleep away. His back and neck were a bit stiff from sleeping upright, and he was disoriented for a moment as he tried to remember how he’d gotten here.

“Go where?”

Sho looked away. “I need to go…I have to relieve myself.”

“Oh.”

The pod didn’t have a toilet or a sink or a shower. He was close to asking Sho to simply drink a bottle of water and just pee in that for now, if only so he could get back to sleep. But that wouldn’t be very friendly, and despite their differences, they’d have to get along now if they were going to get through this.

“How’s the air outside?” he asked.

Sho moved away, heading to the control console. He was upright and walking, albeit slower than what Satoshi knew was normal for him. He’d managed to find a clean shirt in one of the caches of supplies. None of his usual fancy fabrics, but he’d found a tight gray thermal shirt with long sleeves. It clung perfectly to him, and Satoshi hoped his interest wasn’t showing in his face. It was more important that they both stay warm.

“The air outside is fine. It’s chilly, but the O2 levels are perfectly adequate. We won’t have to wear the pressurized suits or anything,” Sho admitted. “I ran a scan of the immediate vicinity. I did a topographical scan, a thermal scan, and…”

“Sho-kun, if there’s a tree out there, just go pee on it.”

Sho turned to look at him, embarrassed. “Right. You’re right. I also checked the radar. I can’t trust the scanners to be a hundred percent accurate. Especially given atmospheric interference and…”

Satoshi sighed. “You don’t have to skirt around it. Just ask me to go out there with you.”

Sho nodded. “Will you go with me?”

He unbuckled the harness, joints cracking as he got to his feet. “Of course.”

After running a few final checks, the airlock door hissed when they opened it. The red parachute was still blocking their view, but they managed to make the step down onto the ground. Cutting the parachute out of the way with a utility knife from one of the supply cases, Satoshi kept it out in front of them as two princes from fairly distant worlds set foot on Rakuen soil.

Lucky for them, the pod hadn’t landed in the ocean. It hadn’t landed and sunk, drowning them. Instead they’d managed to land in a valley, the air briskly cold but not unmanageable. Breathing real air again after being on board the Kaisei, the Miyabi, and the pod was downright refreshing. He took in lungfuls of it, finding it not so very different from Akatsuki air.

The valley was several kilometers wide with hillier terrain all around them. The grasses waved in the chilly breeze, almost blue in color compared to the green of Akatsuki. It was untamed terrain, the grasses coming up to their knees. Satoshi was still in his rumpled jacket and slacks, his clothes and boots spattered with some of Sho’s blood that had dried there. He knew some of it had belonged to Harada and Kinoshita as well.

While Satoshi turned away, keeping the knife out in case of any threats, Sho moved around to the far side of the pod to relieve himself. He returned, wiping his hands with an antibacterial wipe he’d brought with from the medkits. Civilized and fastidious as always.

Sho had a handheld scanner with him, pulling it from his pocket so he could help to orient them. By the time Satoshi had gone ahead and relieved himself as well, just so they wouldn’t have to come back out again so soon, Sho had some answers.

Twenty kilometers to the north was a salt lake that covered maybe half the continent. Eight kilometers to the south were foothills that eventually led to the jagged mountain range beyond the valley. To the west was marshland, not easy to navigate.

And forty-two kilometers to the east was a heat signature that made Sho gasp in surprise.

They looked at the screen together. “What could it be?” Satoshi asked.

“That’s kaenium,” Sho mumbled, still shocked.

“Like a vein of it that hasn’t been mined?”

“No, as in people. A settlement. I know more about kaenium deposits than I ever thought I’d have to, with all the research I’ve invested in,” Sho explained, tapping on the screen. “If kaenium hasn’t been extracted yet, it really won’t give off a reading like this. Only when it’s burned.”

Satoshi rudely snatched the scanner out of Sho’s hand. “Then maybe they can help us.”

“Wait,” Sho protested. “Wait a second.”

“We have enough food for a week, maybe a few days more if we skimp a little, but I don’t think that’s very wise. We’re in unfamiliar territory, and we need to be at our full strength. So we have to eat. But what happens if we get to the end of that week and nobody has rescued us?”

Sho rolled his eyes, taking the scanner back. “We can’t just go wandering off.”

“I’m not saying that. It’s not wandering if we plan. If we say to ourselves that if we pack enough to get us there, if we spend the days here in the pod analyzing the terrain, water sources, possible threats to us…”

“The settlement could be a threat to us. There’s been no contact with any people on Rakuen before. None of the other expeditions found anyone.”

“Had any of them landed here? On this part of the planet?”

Sho was silent. That was a no.

“Well?” he prodded. “The pod has four passengers’ worth of food, water, medical supplies. And items for defense. There are laser pistols. There’s more knives like the one I’ve got. We have the means to protect ourselves, we have items for trade or barter.”

“Rescue protocol states that we should stay put, continuing to broadcast our rescue beacon,” Sho explained, crossing his arms to stay warm. He was unable to hide a small wince of pain. His little shivers were probably agitating his injury. “To leave would be reckless.”

“We have no cover out here, Sho-kun,” Satoshi said. He gestured wildly around them. Nothing but grass in every direction, and an escape pod with a red-tinted hull in the middle of it. The nearest tree was probably a few kilometers away. “Our position isn’t very defensible.”

“That hull is made of the strongest aluminum alloy. If it can get through the atmosphere without breaking up, I doubt weather will damage it.”

“We don’t know what’s out there.”

“Precisely,” Sho argued, “which is why we need to stay inside the pod unless absolutely necessary.”

“And if our food runs out, and we didn’t plan for that scenario? If we’re out of food and kilometers away from anything we can use to sustain ourselves? Or say that we do let the food run out because hey, we’ve got water for a few more days. Then what happens if _that_ runs out?”

“Satoshi-kun, your solution assumes there are people out there eager to help two outsiders. You think we can just hike over to that heat signature, assume there’s people living there who won’t flee or attack at the first sight of us?” 

Sho was getting angry now. Even during all their hours of negotiations on Akatsuki, he’d never lost his temper. Satoshi hadn’t even been aware Sho had a temper. He’d always been the picture of calm.

Then again, every time they’d met before, Sho had his CompTab. He had his arguments and his bullet points. His rules and his protocols. Sakurai Sho was the type of man who always had a plan. Sakurai Sho never went into anything without having all the facts. Something like this, deciding something on the fly…it had to be absurdly foreign to him. 

Satoshi supposed that he’d always been a touch more open-minded. Jun would probably say “spontaneous” was more accurate.

He reached out a hand, resting it on Sho’s shoulder. “All I am saying is that we need to come up with plans for a worst-case scenario. The scenario where they don’t come back for us.”

Sho’s eyes widened with fear, and Satoshi wondered if it had been the wrong thing to say, even if it was a possibility. He took his hand away.

Sho shook his head, sighing. “How would they find us if we were forced to leave the pod? If they do manage to make it here?”

Satoshi rested his hands on his hips. “We leave a note.”

“That’s your genius plan? A _note_?”

He was losing patience. Things had been much less stressful when he’d been sleeping. 

“Sho-kun, you think it’s reckless to leave the pod. The rule book you probably memorized when you were a toddler is your guide in all situations. And honestly, if we had weeks’ worth of supplies, I wouldn’t be bugging you about this right now at all. But the fact of the matter is that we are on the clock. And we’ve been on the clock since we landed. So you propose we stay here. Terrific. Fine. We only go outside to take a piss. We’ll do what you want, it’s your escape pod and I’m just your lucky passenger. But the attitude we need to take inside that pod starting right now is that it’s not sustainable. We need a source for fresh water. We need a source for food, even if we’re just bringing it back here. We can’t just sit around staring at the beacon like it’s a given that they’ll find us.”

“That’s pessimistic.”

“That’s being practical. A trait I thought you possessed, but clearly I was wrong.”

Sho stared at him, astonishment in his eyes.

“What?” Satoshi spat at him, exhausted.

He was surprised when Sho smiled at him. “I think that’s the most you’ve ever spoken before. I mean, all in one go.”

“Fuck you,” he replied, even though he didn’t really mean it.

That just made Sho laugh. “Where have you been all this time? Where has this Prince Satoshi been hiding?”

Satoshi found himself wondering the same thing.

“You’ll get sick if we keep standing out here. Go back into the pod.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Sho said, none of the bite left in his words. He obediently moved to go back to the airlock. “And we’ll make scanning for potable water in the immediate vicinity our first priority.”

—

They made it through their first twenty-four hours without any mishaps. They kept the pod’s hatch locked tight while they slept, but to preserve the remaining oxygen, they left the hatch open during daylight hours. It also allowed them to divert power away from life support to the pod’s sensors instead so they could get a better lay of the land.

There was a small spring half a kilometer to the south of their current position, and the water from it was most likely potable. And if it wasn’t, they’d run checks on some of the supplies in the medkits. The computer had informed them that some small yellow pellets could be mixed in with water to improve its potability. They’d only drink that in case of emergency. Come morning, they’d pack the water bottles they’d already emptied and refill them at the spring, just as a precautionary measure.

Since the pod’s computer and other controls were far off the Kagerou network, the only information they had to work with was whatever the scanners could pick up and whatever was already in the computer logs. The pod hadn’t been designed for long-term guests, so the systems were fairly sparse. Rakuen’s atmosphere disrupted most long-range scans either way.

The heat signature to the east, the place with the burning kaenium, was still mysterious. Was it a massive city? A tiny hamlet? Just one person? They had no idea. The mountain range to the south interfered just as much with their scans. 

The pair of them had both changed entirely out of the clothes they’d worn on the Miyabi in favor of the thermal gear in the pod. Satoshi didn’t want to admit how much he liked the comfort and warmth the clothing provided. Akatsuki miners had dug up the kaenium that powered the Kagerou factories that had manufactured them. He and Sho matched now, gray thermal long-sleeved shirts and pants, gray zip-up jackets with hoods. Each item had the Sakurai family insignia on it, stitched in red. Satoshi felt a bit guilty for wearing it, but warmth and his health were more important.

The weather was something they were keeping a close eye on. The valley grew bitterly cold at night. Even with the clothes and jackets, they couldn’t afford to be out in the open after dark. If they did have to abandon the pod, they’d have to find shelter at night or they’d surely freeze to death. They had special pressurized suits with O2 tanks available, designed in case the pod’s airlock had malfunctioned on their descent. But they were heavy, clumsy to wear. They’d never be able to evade predators.

And to their horror, predators were out in abundance.

Satoshi was no stranger to animal life. Akatsuki was home to creatures of all sizes, from stinging hornets and wasps to larger animals like bears. It was forbidden to swim near Lake Kobayashi where he liked to fish because poisonous snakes commonly lived in the reedy areas along the shoreline. Sho, on the other hand, knew such creatures only from behind glass. A few of Kagerou’s cities had zoos, all the animals imported from Akatsuki.

Rakuen, however, was a different matter. The valley where the pod had landed was home to numerous creatures. They’d seen a bird of prey flying overhead in the distance, its wingspan at least twice the size of any bird Satoshi had ever seen. There’d been audible howling when they’d opened the airlock hatch in the morning, the noise traveling up from the hills and mountainous terrain to the south. The pod’s sensors picked up various small heat signatures during the night, indicative of animals sniffing around outside in curiosity. There was no telling whether they were friend or foe. Before going outside, even just to relieve themselves now, he and Sho both toted laser pistols. Satoshi also kept the utility knife in his pocket.

As the dangers surrounding them became more clear, Sho had finally come around on the idea that their rescue was a guaranteed thing. They’d agreed that if their pod wasn’t found by their fifth day in the valley, they would head east and hope for the best. Sho’s biggest concern had been tracking, wondering how they might be found by rescue teams outside of the pod, but they now had a better answer for that as well.

Since the pod was equipped for four, that meant they had four handheld scanners that could be used to determine the terrain ahead, to assess whether plant life was poisonous or okay to eat. The scanners’ internal batteries were designed to last six months, and they’d come to the realization that if nobody found them in six months, there wasn’t much else they could do but accept it.

They immediately checked the batteries on two of the scanners before powering them down to hold in reserve along with the two extra laser pistols they had for protection. The third scanner they’d use for its usual purpose in the event they did have to abandon the pod. And the fourth Sho was currently in the process of re-programming. Sho was using the pulse signature on the pod’s beacon as a guide, hoping to convert the scanner into a traveling beacon of their own. The signal would be weaker, but it would have the same signature that anyone from Akatsuki or Kagerou would recognize as familiar, as a friendly signal.

They had just locked down the pod for the night for the second time, Satoshi in the process of packing. The two extra sets of thermal clothing, water, food, and tactical items. It was something to do, something to focus on. At least they had a plan. With a plan, he couldn’t give in to fear. 

He cinched the lighter pack closed, hoping Sho hadn’t noticed that Satoshi had put all the heavier items into the pack he intended to carry himself. Sho’s wound needed to heal, even at the cost of his pride.

He looked over, saw that Sho was still tinkering with the scanner. His brown eyes seemed tired, and he finally set it down on top of the console with a gentle thunk.

“You fix it?” he asked.

Sho shook his head. “Think I need to sleep on it.”

“We’ve got time,” he replied quietly.

He sat down on the floor of the pod beside Sho, tugging the blanket from his seat so he could sit on it. They both sat with their backs against the center console for support. He said nothing for a while, listening to Sho’s breathing beside him.

They’d gotten this far because they had plans to make. Objectives. They’d go to the spring in the morning, they’d work more on the scanner. But Satoshi could still feel reality sinking in. The larger situation was out of their hands. They had no control over how Mina reacted. Over how Akatsuki would handle this and what Kagerou’s reaction would be. Would they be rescued? Would they be presumed dead? Would their home planets go to war? 

He had a feeling that Sho was realizing it, too.

“My father appointed Harada-san as captain of my guard when I was fourteen.”

He looked over, saw that Sho’s eyes were wet. He simply let him speak.

“For twenty years, he’d been by my side. When I was a rebellious teenager, he was always the one who got me back in line. He never raised his voice, he hardly had to do anything.” Sho wrinkled his nose, perhaps trying to keep from crying. Satoshi was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that Sakurai Sho could have ever been rebellious. “I respected him. I trusted him. I thought he might understand that I wanted to solve Kagerou’s problems. I only wanted to help people…”

Satoshi looked away, the grief in Sho’s face too raw and painful for him to watch.

“And I think what hurts the most is that I’ll never get to ask him why. When I told him where we were going, that I was just taking him and Kinoshita, he didn’t question it. But now I’ll never know how long he’d been working against me. I’ll never know what hardened his heart so much that he’d rather see the both of us dead than allow me to pursue the course I was on.”

Sho’s chuckle was incredibly sad, disbelieving. 

“I’ll never even know how many others were against me. Those men and women in the House of Councillors who never wanted to raise a finger to do anything for your people. I’ll never know how many of them would smile to my face even as they tried to undermine me. What I was doing, it wasn’t treason…it wasn’t at all. It was an alternative to strike breaking, an alternative to exploitation. There was nothing shameful about it.”

“I appreciate what you were trying to do, Sho-kun,” he said softly. “But Mina would never have let you use our mines to test your theory. You’d have put us in a terrible position. Mina would never put our people at risk that way.”

“You’re probably right.”

“No, I’m definitely right.” He tapped out a gentle rhythm on his knee with his fingertips. “She’s my sister, and I know what she’d have said.”

“But my father would never have…”

“How do you know that?”

“He’s my father,” Sho said, his tone bitter. “And I know what he’d have said.”

Satoshi sighed. “Then the strike goes on. Your people continue to starve and mistreat mine.”

Sho’s mumbled “yes” in reply hung in the air for quite a while.

Finally he got up, tugging his blanket with him.

“I’m going to sleep. You should sleep, too. We’ve got a field trip tomorrow.”

Sho said nothing but did as he was told.

—

He woke to the sound of the proximity alert. The console was blinking, and he grumbled in his seat. The lights kicked on at Sho’s command, and he blinked, seeing Sho hurry over to shut off the alert.

“Satoshi…”

He unbuckled the harness, moving to Sho’s side. “What’s wrong?” 

They’d synced the clock with Rakuen daylight hours. The sun had been up for almost an hour already. Sho pointed to one of the screens on the console. When they’d gone to sleep, there’d been two heat signatures, both kilometers away. But now the pod was surrounded by a sea of red.

“Stars…” Satoshi whispered, backing away from the console and heading to the porthole near the hatch. They’d cut the parachute away in the afternoon yesterday so their view wasn’t obstructed. He inhaled sharply at the sight outside. The proximity alert should have been set off earlier, he thought. “Sho-kun, this…is not good.”

He felt warmth behind him, Sho coming up and resting a hand on his back. He felt Sho’s hand tighten in the fabric of his shirt. “What are they?”

As far as he could see out the fairly small porthole was brown. They were large creatures, four-legged, with heavy-looking fur. Some had thick horns protruding from their heads. Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. They’d come to the valley overnight, and they were grazing. Perhaps they were some Rakuen equivalent of cattle, but they were obviously wild. The cows Satoshi knew in farms back home were gentle, unassuming creatures. Even the smallest among the ones out in the valley now, the babies and the young, were the size of adult cattle back home. The others were two, maybe three times the size.

He watched them munching obliviously on the bluish grass, his heart racing, Sho’s increasingly nervous breaths tickling the back of his neck as they tried to share the view out the small porthole.

“They might not be hostile,” he mumbled. “Could be that this valley is just where they come to eat. They’ve come with their…calves, I guess. If they were intent on neutralizing a threat, would they all come? The mothers and babies? Probably not?”

“Why weren’t they here yesterday?”

“Migration? How should I know, Sho-kun, I’m not an animal expert.”

The proximity alert went off again, and before Sho could move to go turn it off, the pod started to rock a little.

They stumbled back, Sho tripping and falling against the console. Satoshi fell against him, trying to stay steady. As the pod jostled around, Satoshi leaned forward, keeping his feet apart to try and keep from sliding around. Sho’s body under his was solid and warm, shaking. He tried not to laugh when Sho let out a little whimper of fright. Instead he leaned closer so Sho wouldn’t be jostled around, injure himself further.

The rocking stopped about a minute later. He found Sho still beneath him with his back against the console, Satoshi all but trapping him with an arm to either side of him. It took a few heartbeats before either of them had the courage to react. Sho looked up at him with flushed cheeks, raising an eyebrow.

“You think there’s a…a space cow out there trying to hump our escape pod?” he asked nervously.

Satoshi backed away, a little embarrassed at their closeness. He moved back to the porthole. He watched one of the largest of the creatures pass by, a massive brown blur as he circled the pod. “We’re gonna call them space cows? They’re on the ground, you know.”

“I stand by space cows. It sounds extremely scientific,” Sho said with a chuckle, clearing his throat and turning back to the control console to get a handle on their situation.

He was kind of glad Sho had opted for a comment on the cows rather than on the awkward position they’d found themselves in. Close enough to kiss. That feeling he’d had on board the Miyabi, it had returned. That unsettling need to protect Sho, do whatever he could to keep him safe.

Which was absurd. 

He crossed his arms, looking at the creatures, brown dotting the landscape as far as he could see. “We open the hatch right now, it might frighten them,” he muttered.

“How are we going to get to the spring? For water? And how do you propose we pee?”

“I’d say we wait them out,” Satoshi suggested, “but that’s assuming that they’re inclined to move on any time soon. This is their valley, and we’re the unwanted guests.”

Sho tapped on the console. “According to this, we’ve got about seven hours of daylight left.”

“I’m not morally opposed to peeing in a bottle. But then again, us rough and tumble Akatsuki folks aren’t as civilized as you, right?”

Sho rolled his eyes. “We don’t think that…”

“Of course not,” he muttered. “You don’t think about us at all…”

“That’s unfair,” Sho said, shaking his head. “Can we…can we not turn my honest question into a political debate?”

Sho was right. And after Sho’s admissions since they’d met up in orbit, he knew for a fact that Sho wanted to help Akatsuki, even if his plans had been naive and arrogant. But Satoshi wasn’t quite in the mood to apologize. He’d never be worrying about grazing space cows in the first place if Sho hadn’t insisted on meeting at such a remote and dangerous place. He’d never have gotten trapped in this tiny pod with him if Sho had simply been more honest and upfront with his father. But he supposed Sho knew this just as well as he did.

“Seven hours of daylight,” Satoshi repeated. “In five hours, if our friends are still outside, it’s obvious that we have to give up on the spring for today. And if they’re still outside in the morning, then it means we might have to put ourselves at risk. To get to the spring or to start the journey east.”

Sho looked glum. “And if one of them gets friendly with the pod again?”

“Unless they tip it over, I guess we just have to put up with the neighbors’ hospitality.”

“Great.”

He tried to offer Sho a comforting smile. “Whoever fills their pee bottle first could win a prize.”

And that finally got a laugh out of Sho. “You’re disgusting.”

He shrugged, trying to ignore how much Sho’s laugh warmed him, comforted him. They couldn’t keep arguing. They really couldn’t afford to. And Satoshi knew he had to let go of his anger, his resentment for Kagerou. At least until they had a better sense of what the future held for them. 

He headed for the handheld scanner Sho had been working with the night before. He picked it up from the console, holding it out as a peace offering. “Back to work then?”

Sho nodded. “Back to work.”

He backed away, inclining his head. “Then it’s guard duty for me. I’ll keep an eye on the space cows.”

“A most princely undertaking.”

He grinned, heading back for the porthole. “Moo,” he replied with a wink.

—

The space cows were here to stay, and as dawn returned, they reached a point where an empty water bottle wasn’t going to serve their needs. It wasn’t the most dignified moment of Satoshi’s life, talking through alternatives with Sho. But before he could suggest that they pop open the hatch and stick their bare asses out into the cold air, Sho admitted it was best that they take the risk with the cows. 

The pod had moved a few times throughout the last day, but they sensed it was more out of curiosity than hostility from the massive creatures. The animals were likely marking it with their scent, claiming it the way they might mark any other territory. Well, now it was Sho and Satoshi’s turn to stake a firmer claim.

They both kept their eyes shut and fingers crossed while Satoshi opened the hatch. Sho’s attention was on the control console. They waited a few minutes, just to keep track of the heat signatures closest to them. Satoshi stood in the airlock entryway, breathing in the ugly combination of cold air and animal shit. It seemed that no matter what planet you were on, the local wildlife could stink.

At least it made him feel less guilty about his own planned contributions.

He looked around, seeing that most of the massive animals were paying no mind to him. There were a few bulls with horns wandering around in the distance, but their planned pathway to the spring would not be impossible. They’d just have to do their best to calmly walk through the sea of creatures.

He and Sho packed up their gear in the event they weren’t able to return to the pod. The last thing they wanted to do was fire their laser pistols, so their steps would have to be careful but confident. Lingering too long, especially when one of the bulls was in range, could be troublesome. Thankfully, Sho had managed to re-program the back-up scanner. Now they’d be detected by anyone looking for the Miyabi’s escape pod, the scanner sending out the exact same pulse. 

Once they had their boots on the ground, they each took turns walking around to the other side, taking care of their business. Thankfully that went without a hitch. Sho came back around, cleaning his hands and then hoisting the pack that waited for him at Satoshi’s feet.

He’d helped to change Sho’s bandaging that morning, and while he was still a bit sore, the wound was clean and aside from the mishmash of white scars peppering his skin now, he was well on the road to recovery. Now they had to press on and hope that no further harm would come to them.

Laser pistols at the ready, Satoshi had volunteered to walk first, letting Sho hold on to the scanner behind him, giving him updates on the sea of cattle around them. They took a bit of a convoluted path, but it was a path through groups that were least likely to charge and murder them. The valley was large and vast, and already some of the cows had moved on from the area around the pod, looking for taller grasses further on.

The temperature was still cold, and the grasses had a fine layering of frost. That didn’t stop the cows from eating. The presence of the large, heavy animals actually helped them out a little, since much of the knee-high grasses had been eaten or in many places trampled over. The soil was hard-packed under their feet. They were pretty lucky, all things considered.

While Satoshi walked ahead, holding the pistol at his side, not wanting to lift it suddenly and draw attention from the onlookers, Sho was a constant source of reassurance. He was babbling for the sake of babbling, if only to remind Satoshi that he was right behind him. “Good, good. Might want to hang a left.” “Ah, think I stepped in shit…” “Let’s try and get around that group.”

They walked a quarter of a kilometer at their slow, careful pace and finally left the herd behind. A walk that would normally take a few minutes in a straight line took them about forty since they had to double back a few times or move far out of the way to avoid the animals. But aside from a few territorial grunts, the animals had ignored them.

They continued south to the spring. The grasses were taller since the herd hadn’t moved this way yet, but their path was unimpeded. With a playful shove, Sho moved to walk beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

“Do you feel like an explorer?” Sho inquired, an almost boyish giddiness to him now. It was rather cute.

“Sho-kun, we haven’t gone very far yet.”

“Oh, I know. But none of the other expeditions have been here, to this area before. At least I don’t think so.”

There was still a lot they didn’t know. Most of the Kagerou science expeditions, at least the ones Sho knew about, had touched down on other continents. But they had no way of knowing what might have transpired centuries earlier when the first ships started to arrive from the Old Planet. It wasn’t unreasonable to presume that some of them had come to Rakuen.

It had taken years for settlers to make a go of it on Kagerou. There was evidence that some people had stayed on Akatsuki for many years, at least until technology for creating the domes made it possible for Kagerou to be sustainable. Maybe some of them had gone to Rakuen to wait. Maybe some of them hadn’t left. Or maybe with all the atmospheric interference, they’d never been able to.

But if any of them had settled in this valley, there was no evidence of it left behind. On Kagerou, most of the transport ships from the Old Planet had been broken down and repurposed, used in the earliest forms of the domed cities. There’d been similar undertakings on Akatsuki, the metal melted down and used for construction. That part of their history had largely been lost because the first settlers needed the materials to survive.

So maybe there were people who had settled here. But at the very least, Satoshi and Sho were the first outsiders in the history of their planets to walk on this soil. That was rather amazing.

He couldn’t help smiling at the much more confident way Sho was carrying himself. 

The scanner was accurate at least at this distance, and they came upon the spring. It wasn’t much more than a bubbling pool, connected to a stream that gently meandered through the grasses. Satoshi stood guard, pistol at the ready, while Sho crouched down, holding the scanner close to check the water.

“Good news. The scanner says it won’t kill us,” Sho said, setting his pack down and opening it.

“Bad news?”

“Bad news is…can you smell it?”

Satoshi crouched down, chuckling a little. “A bit like rotten eggs. It’s…Sho-kun, it’s not that bad…”

“It reeks,” Sho complained, crinkling his nose. “You forget that I’ve lived thirty-four years inside a literal bubble. A bubble with state of the art air and water purifiers.”

“Don’t be snobby,” he teased, snatching the scanner from Sho’s hand. There were very faint traces of hydrogen sulfide in the water. Certainly not enough to cause them any harm. Shoving the scanner back into Sho’s hand, he took out one of the empty bottles, loosening the cap and dunking it straight into the stream. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

He snickered while Sho grumbled about the smell. Together they filled each bottle, and with each one he was able to put back in his pack came reassurance that no matter what, they had just bought themselves more time.

“We should just go,” Satoshi said, twisting on a cap.

“What?”

He looked over, saw the worry clouding Sho’s eyes. Sho the explorer had lost his nerve already? And all over a little stinky water?

“East,” he said plainly. “Just listen, alright? The weather’s as good as it’s likely to get. Skies are clear today. It’s what, forty kilometers off? Terrain’s a little hilly, but if we keep a steady pace we can hike that in a few days.”

“Maybe…maybe tomorrow…”

“What if it rains tomorrow? Snows tomorrow?”

“And what if a rescue ship arrives tomorrow? Satoshi-kun, you agreed to wait five days.”

“I agreed to wait five days when we didn’t have a field full of space cows camping outside. I’m sick of sleeping upright, and I’m not in the mood for another night of the cows nudging us.” He reached over, resting a hand on Sho’s shoulder. “We have everything we need with us. If we go back to the pod, it means we’re waiting for someone to save us. If we go east, it means we’re at least trying to save ourselves.”

“You really think they’re abandoning us here?”

“Of course not,” he said immediately, firmly. At least he could still trust those closest to him, unlike Sho.

Even if Mina explicitly forbade it, he knew that Nino and Jun would risk everything to come back for him. He knew that because he’d risk the same for them. And if it wasn’t within the Kaisei’s capabilities, he still knew they’d find a way. But they couldn’t be reckless about it. Even Nino and Jun would have to take time to plan, to analyze previous expeditions to Rakuen.

Nino and Jun would try, but they wouldn’t leave unprepared. It was Satoshi’s duty to stay alive and justify the risks they were taking. In the pod, in that wide open valley, they were exposed. But there was a forest to the east that would offer them cover from predators and the elements alike.

“We’ve already spoken about this plan. All we’re doing is moving it forward,” he continued calmly, not in the mood to argue yet again. That would solve nothing. “There is nothing for us back in the pod. We can’t afford to ignore the opportunity we have right now. Fair weather, the scanners are functioning. We don’t have to walk back through the cow shit.”

“The cow shit was pretty rough,” Sho replied, smirking.

He closed the bag, getting to his feet. The added weight of the water would slow them a little, but they didn’t have a guarantee of fresh water ahead. Or at least fresh water that was as easily obtained as it was from the spring. The more they had with them now, the better off they’d be.

“We have to trust each other,” he said softly. He didn’t bother saying “or we won’t make it.” He figured Sho knew that bit already.

Sho hoisted his own bag, his eyes still a little uncertain. But he nodded in agreement, taking out the scanner, gesturing for them to continue on their journey.

They walked quietly, scanning carefully for any creatures that might live in the grasslands. They had plenty of medical supplies from the pod, but Satoshi hoped they wouldn’t have to use them.

It was an hour before Sho said something that had nothing to do with the path ahead, with the readouts from the scanner.

“Satoshi-kun?”

“Yeah?”

“I…I do trust you.” Sho’s voice was nervous, almost shy. “You saved my life, and I still haven’t thanked you for it. So…thank you. And I just want you to know that I trust you more than anyone right now.”

“Glad to hear it,” he mumbled, trying and probably failing to keep from blushing. 

All they could do was move forward, but his steps felt just a bit lighter with Sho’s admission.

—

The ground was gone. Why was the ground gone? He floated through red, his vision blurred. 

“Help me!”

He tried to turn, unable to find his way. The voice’s pleas grew louder still.

“Help me! Help me!”

He tried to move, unable to place his feet firmly. He drifted, desperate to help. He managed to turn a corner.

He found Sho, floating. His hands were up. He was surrendering. But Harada…Harada was there and he…

“Help me!” Sho screamed, and then Harada fired. 

He watched Sho disintegrate right in front of—

 

“It’s okay…”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t…

“Hey, Satoshi-kun. Hey, you’re going to be okay.”

He opened his eyes, the images already starting to fade. His nightmare had propelled him into a seated position, the blanket bunched around his legs. His breaths were coming in gasps, and he moved a hand to his cheek, finding tear tracks. They weren’t in space. He wasn’t floating. And Sho was alive. Sho was real.

It was dark, and he couldn’t see much of anything, but he could feel warmth beside him, all around him. Sho had an arm around him, reassuring, reinforcing the idea that they were here. The Miyabi was gone. But they were alive. For now, at least, they were alive.

He shut his eyes, mumbling an apology. Sho’s hand rubbed up and down his arm in a comforting motion. 

“You were talking in your sleep,” Sho said, his voice low. “You were upset.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Satoshi took a few deep breaths, annoyed with his brain for playing such cruel tricks on him. The last few nights he’d been so exhausted, mentally and physically, that sleep had come to him quite easily. Dreams had abandoned him, but tonight they’d returned. And in an awful fashion.

He focused on facts. He focused on reality.

They’d walked fourteen kilometers that day, stopping when they’d come upon a hollowed out tree. The forest was old, the trees here soaring far above their heads. The trees had been here long before them, and the trees would be here long after them. They’d set up camp inside the massive trunk, enough space for them to curl up, sleep on their sides. It wasn’t the most comfortable, and it was still cold, but they were largely protected from the wind, as were their supplies. They’d saved a large swath of fabric from the parachute that had eased the pod’s landing. It now served as a makeshift covering, and it was flapping gently in the night air.

“Sho-kun, I’m sorry for waking you…we should rest…”

He turned away, Sho’s hand slipping off of him as he turned over onto his side, bringing his knees up, making himself small.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Sho mumbled, lying back beside him.

“Just a bad dream.”

“I think I had a dream last night where I was playing violin. I haven’t played since I was a kid.” Sho’s chuckle was warm, gentle. “You’d think with all the stress we’re under that I’d be having nightmares, just like you. The brain is remarkable, I think.”

He shut his eyes. While some of his dream had faded away, the feelings hadn’t. He could still hear Sho’s desperate pleas, his cries for help. He hadn’t been able to save him. His racing heart probably thought he was still in the nightmare. Satoshi didn’t really believe in dreams and what they meant or symbolized. It was one of those things Mina had been obsessed with years back after reading some fortune teller’s book. She was always asking her advisors and attendants what they had dreamed about, and then she’d say if it was a good or bad omen. At least she’d given up that nonsense when she’d become Queen. 

Dreaming about Sho in danger meant nothing. Right? Harada and Kinoshita were already dead, and Harada by Satoshi’s own hand. He’d never killed anyone before, and perhaps he felt guilty. But he’d do it again. He knew that. He’d do it again in an instant if Sho was in danger. He didn’t know if that made him a bad person. Frankly, he didn’t care.

“Why’d you stop playing?” he found himself asking a short time later, Sho’s shallow breathing behind him letting him know he wasn’t asleep yet either. “The violin.”

“I played violin for a few years, I just didn’t like it like I enjoyed playing piano, so I asked to focus only on one instrument. Piano just came more naturally. But I hardly do that anymore either,” Sho admitted. “Everything I do is work and work and work because I…”

Satoshi didn’t press him to finish his sentence. 

“I like to sketch,” he said, keeping Sho from thinking about his father, his responsibilities. “They gave me a tutor for a while, my parents, but I hated him. He always wanted me to draw bowls of fruit and stuff. I drew what I wanted, and he’d come back every day with another stupid basket of fruit.”

“So you’ve always had a rebellious streak?” Sho teased.

“Damn right,” he said, smiling despite the lingering unease of his nightmare. This memory was a fond one. “One day I drew an apple and a banana teaming up to murder the tutor. He was…dismissed.”

Sho’s laugh warmed him much better than the blanket did. “And what was the reaction?”

“My mother was embarrassed, but my father said that I had a creative mind. I didn’t get in trouble.”

He could hear Sho turning onto his back, the soft rustle of his own blanket. “If I’d done something like that, I’d have been forced onto my hands and knees, to bow down and beg forgiveness from the tutor. And I’d have been drawing bowls of fruit until my hand fell off.”

“Because your parents are strict?”

“Because creativity isn’t as highly praised on Kagerou, at least among the court,” Sho muttered. “Tradition and duty are more favored attributes.”

Which explained a lot about why Sho’s creative solution, attempting to find a more effective means of using kaenium to generate power without asking permission first, was controversial. They were a planet of constant technological advancement, and yet they seemed so conservative in other ways. Harada and Kinoshita’s actions on board the Miyabi confirmed it all the more.

“Do you plan to keep things that way?” he asked.

“How do you mean?” Sho answered.

“When you become king?”

Sho was quiet for a while, and Satoshi thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally, he heard Sho exhale, gathering his thoughts.

“I wonder if that’s a realistic goal anymore.” Sho sighed. “Given recent developments.”

Satoshi wasn’t sure if Sho was hesitant because of the possibility of being stranded here permanently or because people he trusted so deeply had betrayed him, nearly killed him.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’d be a good king, Sho-kun.”

When Sho laughed, he turned over, unable to see more of him than a faint outline in the dark.

“I’m serious,” he said. “You’re meticulous, knowledgeable. You want what’s best for your people.”

“They don’t understand,” Sho admitted. “Many of the people. They’re used to the way things are. They don’t think too hard about how the kaenium that powers their homes is mined. Or the people that do the work. All they care about is what it means for them when there are shortages. They only care once they start to feel the effects. And for some reason they aren’t angry at my father or his advisors or the inflexible and intolerant policies that led to those shortages. They’re angry at you. At Akatsuki, I mean. Their taxes support the mines…”

“And they assume we’re ungrateful for the employment opportunities Kagerou provides,” Satoshi interrupted, anger simmering within him. He’d heard all these arguments before, these insulting and infuriating arguments. Akatsuki’s people were the ungrateful ones?!

“Yes,” Sho said.

“I still think you’d be a good king,” he said firmly. 

“But why?”

“Because you’ve spent your entire life preparing for it. Because you came to Akatsuki and argued your father’s viewpoint so strongly. You had an answer for everything, with data and evidence to back it up…” He smiled ruefully. “If you could be that convincing arguing for something you don’t even really believe in, just imagine how convincing you might be arguing the opposite position.”

“Satoshi-kun…”

“You pissed me off, you know. Stars, you really pissed me off. Every time you’d come visit. I hated sitting there, at a table with you, trying my hardest to get you to bend on even one little thing and you never did.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry for it. Use it.”

Sho was quiet for a while. Satoshi’s nightmare poked at him again and again, Sho’s cries for help. Not being able to rescue him in time.

“You made it very clear that your sister, that Akatsuki, can’t help me,” Sho mumbled. “And the only reason we’re sleeping inside a stars-forsaken tree right now is because I almost got myself assassinated for having ideas contrary to my father’s. So what am I supposed to do?”

“For now, we sleep. Then we wake up. Then we keep walking east.”

“I get that,” Sho said. “But I mean in the long term.”

“I’ll help you.” 

What was he saying? He could hear Mina’s complaints already, Jun’s following right along after. The Satoshi who retreated at every opportunity back to the peace and quiet of his lake cabin, his fishing boat. That Satoshi was complaining, too.

But the Satoshi of right now, the Satoshi on Rakuen, refused to change his mind.

“I’ll help you,” he vowed once again, and the conversation was closed.


	4. Chapter 4

They spoke very little come morning, saying only what needed to be said to get themselves packed up again, to eat and drink and get back on the trail. When Satoshi offered to help Sho with his bandaging, Sho had simply waved him off. He wasn’t quite sure why the atmosphere between them had shifted so suddenly, but maybe Sho was simply tired. Or nervous. He had a lot to think about, now more than ever.

It was an uphill journey, had been all the way from the valley. The terrain would level out soon enough, at least according to their scanner. Icy winds whipped through the trees, and Satoshi could feel it even through his thermal gear. He forced Sho to put up the hood on his jacket, but he kept his down to not limit his peripheral vision as he led the way through the seemingly endless forest. He rubbed at his face from time to time, warming it. But at least the cold kept him awake, alert.

The heat signature was growing stronger still with each kilometer closer they got to it. It had to be a settlement, a very significant one. It wasn’t just one solitary person burning a little kaenium. It was motivating, knowing that people might be out there. Would they be friendly? Hostile? There was no way to know for sure. But the area itself had to be able to sustain a population. Even if he and Sho found no help, there might be sources for water or food nearby. They could replenish supplies to some extent, could carry on.

He was just about to suggest they stop for lunch when he heard Sho’s sudden whisper.

“Stop.”

He did so immediately. Ahead of them trees, beside them trees, behind them trees. 

“Four…no, five heat signatures. Moving fast,” Sho said.

“Where?” he asked. 

Their journey had been quiet so far. Even this close to winter in Akatsuki, it was still possible to hear birdsong, the rustling of smaller creatures among the crunchy leaves. The forest here had been largely devoid of activity thus far. He looked around, laser pistol at the ready. 

When he turned, seeing Sho’s pale face, he watched as Sho lifted his hand, pointing up.

He looked up at the forest canopy, only a few weak rays of sunshine poking through the breaks in the trees. All this time they’d been looking forward. Maybe they should have been looking up a bit more. Because now he could see them, flying in and perching on some of the highest branches of the soaring trees.

Nests. Massive, massive nests. He remembered the bird of prey they’d seen in the distance, back when they were still in the pod. A bird that massive would need a home base large enough to accommodate its size. 

Perhaps they were walking through their territory. Right now.

“Still five heat signatures,” Sho muttered. “Closing in fast.”

The nests were high up, so maybe he and Sho weren’t much to think about. But then he thought about owls and mice and their comparative sizes.

At the first chilling screech, he tugged on Sho’s wrist.

“Move,” he said. “Run.”

“They can fly,” Sho reminded him needlessly, shoving the scanner in the pocket of his jacket and zipping it closed. He pulled out his own laser pistol, and they both switched them to the strongest setting. Satoshi could feel it heat up in his hand. “They can fly, you know.”

“Still gotta run for it. And if you find a tree like our campsite from last night, you jam your ass inside it.”

Another screech pierced the air, and the sunlight was blotted out. The birds, the creatures, whatever they were…they were descending.

He gave Sho a push. “Move it!”

Satoshi took off, pistol at the ready. Despite his recovering injury, Sho was a very fast runner, and he quickly hurried ahead, dodging around a massive fallen log. Satoshi picked up the pace, branches rustling overhead and the few remaining leaves fluttering down around them as the creatures pursuing them flapped their wings. 

He leaped over a fallen trunk, nearly stumbling over an exposed bunch of roots a moment later. But he kept moving, zigzagging and trying to run parallel to Sho over the unsteady terrain. His heart pounded as the screeches grew louder, and when one of them was so close he could feel the heat of its cries against the back of his neck, he took a sudden left, putting his back to a tree trunk and coming to a quick stop.

The bird didn’t stop for him. It went flying by, a white and gray blur, its wings so wide they clipped the trees. Another followed and this one Satoshi fired on. The pistol in his hand flared with heat and the burst came out, faster than the blink of an eye. He watched as it hit the second pursuing bird in its left wing, feathers and bone exploding, the creature screeching in agony. Without its wing, it lost balance, careening sideways. 

Okay, Satoshi thought, the pistols work.

He heard Sho fire, heard another cry further ahead. Thank the stars Sho was a decent shot, too. He heard more screeching. Sho said there were five of them. Satoshi ran to the next trunk, then the next and the next. When the sunlight around him started to fade, when he heard the next blood-curdling noise come closer, he emerged from behind the trunk, firing at the first sight of white and gray.

The bird continued on with its momentum only to crash into the ground heavily, half its head missing. He heard Sho fire a few times, but with no effect. They were big targets, but fast ones.

His hand was hot, almost enough to burn. It wasn’t exactly safe to keep the pistols at their highest setting for a prolonged amount of time. They weren’t designed for it. But he kept on, listening to the creatures diving among the trees, seeking them out. He found Sho, his clothing drenched in blood and feathers, hiding behind one of the fallen creatures and using it for cover.

He had just fired on one heading toward Sho’s position when he felt it. A whoosh of air behind him and then pain. Pain and pain and pain and pain and—

“Satoshi!”

It all happened way too fast. He tried to pull away and then his feet were leaving the ground. The bird had its talons in him. He felt his arm go limp, the pistol falling away. It was over. It was over. And pain and pain and pain and—

When Sho’s shot hit the creature, Satoshi felt the talons dig in harder reflexively, and he screamed. But then he was falling, and the ground was thankfully not as far away as he thought. The wind was knocked out of him as he landed in a heap, the pack on his back crunching underneath his body.

He lay there, staring up in a daze, trees and trees and trees. It hurt and he didn’t want to look. It hurt and he didn’t want to look. There was a metallic taste in his mouth. Sho kept firing and Sho kept firing and Sho kept firing. He thought there were snowflakes falling. It was cold, it wasn’t unreasonable. But as they got closer, he laughed.

They were feathers.

Sho was beside him soon enough. “Can you move your legs? Can you move them?”

He groaned, left ankle stinging a little as he wiggled his feet. 

“Good, good,” Sho said, and his voice was so gentle. It made him smile.

“Hi Sho-kun.”

“Hello,” Sho replied, his face so serious as he moved his hands over Satoshi’s legs, probably feeling for broken bones. He wouldn’t find any. Satoshi knew where the real problem was.

“He picked me up,” he muttered.

“Yes, he did.”

“But you got him. Good for you.” He coughed, moaning a little as the pain flared in his chest. “Didn’t know they…teach how to shoot on Kagerou.” He coughed again, and the metal taste in his mouth was even more harsh and bitter. “Don’t wanna…shoot a hole in your…stupid dome.”

“I’m going to have to move the pack so you can lie flat. It’s not going to feel good.”

“Didn’t I tell you…perfectly manly to scream?”

And scream he did when Sho helped to slide the straps of the pack off of him. “Too cold out here…” Sho was muttering nervously. “I need to find cover.”

“No…no self-destruct…in forest. Guess…guess we have…time.”

“You talk more when you’re hurt than you do otherwise. Shut up,” Sho complained, and Satoshi smiled again.

Sho had the scanner in his hand, was probably smearing blood across the screen. He was calculating something, looking for something. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t very interesting. Satoshi instead looked up at Sho, focused on Sho. His dark and serious eyes, the line of his jaw.

“Handsome.”

“There’s a cave just south of here. I’ll check it out and come back.”

“You’re handsome, Sho-kun.”

And then he was alone to look at the trees again some more.

There were still feathers falling when he closed his eyes.

—

When he woke, he felt like complete shit.

But he supposed that was an improvement on being dead.

There were no trees overhead. Only shadows and rock. Well, it seemed that Sho had been right about the cave. The light was faint, but his mind told him that Sho had likely used some of the signaling flares from their packs to have some light to work with.

His clothes were gone save for his trunks, but he was covered in blankets and even the parachute to stay warm. He moved his hand up slowly, finding bandaging on his chest on either side, just beneath his shoulders and collarbone where the bird had latched on. He still had a bit of difficulty thinking of that thing as a bird. Why did every animal on Rakuen have to be so…big?

Moving his fingers over his shoulder, inching back, he found the edges of more bandages on his back. The talons had punctured through him on both sides. He was suddenly quite happy that he’d likely passed out from pain before Sho had to use that nasty flesh-burning medical tool on him. But he wondered how much of their medical supplies Sho had wasted on him…

“I suppose we’re even now,” came Sho’s voice from somewhere close by.

Satoshi grinned despite the lingering tingles of pain. “To be fair, I only had to shoot one human to save your life. You had to shoot a bunch of space birds to save mine.”

“True,” Sho teased. “And I had to carry you all the way here. This cave is just over two kilometers from our last position, you know, and you’re heavier than you look.”

He laughed, letting Sho come close. Sho helped him to sit up, lean back against the chilly cave wall, get a better sense of their surroundings. It was larger than their tree trunk, larger inside than the escape pod. Sho had their packs close by, and once Satoshi was sitting as comfortably as he could manage, Sho headed over and opened one, pulling out a protein bar for him.

“So this has been a fun day,” Satoshi muttered, a bit embarrassed when Sho had to unwrap the bar for him, break pieces of it into his fingers so he could feed him, help pour water into his mouth. He was informed that he wasn’t allowed to raise his arms unless absolutely necessary.

“Fun isn’t the word I’d use,” Sho said, his warm fingers brushing against Satoshi’s lips as he pushed another bit of food forward.

Satoshi chewed, raising an eyebrow. When he swallowed, Sho brought up another bite and he shook his head. “So how fucked are we?”

Sho lowered his hand. He was still in his gray thermal gear, although it was covered in bloodstains and in a few places, feathers. By contrast, Satoshi was almost naked. He tried not to think too hard about Sho having to get his clothes off of him to perform first aid.

“I think it’s a ninety-five percent chance that we’re totally fucked,” Sho said, not seeming too ashamed to curse. “I’d say five percent chance that we’re just _mostly_ fucked.”

“Okay. Next question. What happened?”

Sho’s expression was almost comically grim. “Well, I got to see the Prince of Akatsuki nearly flown off to his death in the clutches of a giant bird today. And then when I shot said bird, it dropped you. And when you fell, the pack mostly helped to cushion you. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad news?”

“The scanner I converted to a beacon was in your pack. It was completely crushed.”

Satoshi nodded, letting it sink in a little. “That…is not good.”

“No, and you were also carrying one of the backup scanners. If the fall hadn’t broken it, the broken bottles of water that spilled on it would have anyhow.”

Satoshi paled. “So we have the one scanner that’s still a scanner and the back-up.”

Sho shook his head. “When I started shooting, I took my pack off. Set it on the ground in case my pistol overheated and I needed my back-up. And then one of the birds I shot landed on my pack.”

He shut his eyes, laughing at their ridiculous misfortune. “You’re joking.”

“Back-up pistol is intact. The food I was carrying is smushed, but likely still edible. But the fourth scanner, the other back-up is toast.”

Satoshi opened his mouth. He needed a distraction. Sho obediently held out another bite of protein bar, and he munched on it.

“We should go back to the pod,” Sho suggested.

Satoshi shook his head. “Nope. East.”

“Did you miss the part where I said our beacon is gone? You didn’t land on your head, you know.”

He chuckled and then made a big show of opening his mouth again to be fed. Sho thankfully obliged him. While he chewed, they stared each other down.

When he finally spoke again, he still refused to give up. “We’re closer to the heat signature in the east than the pod, right?”

“Well…yes…but…”

“We lose a day or two in this cave because I’m hurt, fair enough,” he admitted, “but we’ll be out of food sooner than later. And unless you’re fully prepared to shoot a space cow from that giant herd of thus far non-hostile space cows and then rely on them as a food source while camping out in that escape pod until we’re rescued…then we keep going east.”

“I almost watched you die today,” Sho said quietly, Satoshi noticing how red his eyes were looking. Sho was terrified. “How do we know there aren’t more of those things nesting for the next several kilometers waiting to swoop down and kill us?”

“And going back the way we came is better? Those birds were circling around when we were in the valley too.”

“They’ll never be able to find us. Your sister, your friends,” Sho pleaded, reaching out and wrapping his hand around Satoshi’s wrist. Sho didn’t even think his own people would come for him if they could? “The further we get from that pod and the beacon…there are limits. There are limits to my bravery, Satoshi-kun. This has been an odd adventure, but I think it has to end. We need to go back. For our safety. And for our only realistic chance of getting away from here.”

Despite the warning bells ringing in his head, he took hold of Sho’s hand, lacing their fingers together. He’d saved Sho’s life aboard the Miyabi. And now Sho had saved his. Sakurai Sho, the prim and proper aristocrat who grew up playing the piano, breathing artificial air, and studying laws. That same man had lifted him, carried him here. 

“You brought me here. You carried me all the way here,” he mumbled. “Which meant you couldn’t do that and carry both our packs.”

Sho looked down but didn’t let go of his hand.

“Sho-kun, you had to go back for the packs and bring them here all by yourself. There might have been more of those creatures out there or something even worse, but you went back all alone so that we would have food and water. Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie and tell me that there are limits to your bravery.”

He tried not to chuckle at the elegant, graceful tear streaking down Sho’s pale cheek. Did he always have to be so _perfect_? It was kind of sickening, really, Satoshi thought.

So instead he did the only thing that made sense, giving Sho’s hand a tug to pull him closer. Sho let out a rather surprised gasp, but tilted his head gently so their lips could meet. 

He was sore, even with the painkillers and numbing agents Sho had probably forced down his throat, rubbed into his skin when he was unconscious. He was drowsy and they were fucked technology-wise, but it didn’t matter. None of that mattered at this particular moment as he invested his remaining energy into kissing him.

Sho’s grip on his hand tightened, and Satoshi pushed on, pushed more. When he prodded at Sho’s lip with his tongue, Sho yielded almost immediately, letting out a soft moan of pleasure that let Satoshi know he wanted this just as much. The stupid parachute crinkled and rustled, and he probably had crumbs from the protein bar at the corner of his mouth. But it felt so right, it felt so necessary. He’d spent hours and hours of his life staring at Sho, watching him and wanting him. And now he was finally getting what he wanted.

Sho stopped them first, pulling away. He licked his lips, and Satoshi nearly lifted his arm (to hell with his sore shoulder) to yank him back. Sho also slipped his hand away, but he didn’t look angry. In fact, he mostly looked astonished it had happened at all.

“Satoshi-kun…”

Sho’s eyes were so dark, his breathing unsteady.

“What? You don’t like my methods of diplomacy?” Satoshi huffed, already missing the softness of Sho’s mouth on his own.

“I like them a lot, actually,” Sho admitted, breaking off another piece of the protein bar. 

“But?”

Sho held up the morsel for him, a wary smile on his face. “But you can’t just kiss me as a means of distraction. We still have no beacon. We still have no back-up scanners. We should go back to the pod.”

Damn him, Satoshi thought, hiding a smile. “It wasn’t just meant as a distraction. Here, let me prove it to you…”

He leaned forward, and then Sho pressed the bite of protein bar against his lips instead. Satoshi opened obligingly, tongue darting out and grazing against Sho’s finger before he took his hand back. He chewed impatiently. 

“You’ll finish your food, and then I’ve got more painkillers to give you,” Sho ordered. “Then you need to rest. We’re not leaving this cave until I think you’re ready.”

“Instead of painkillers, why don’t you kiss it better, Sensei?” Satoshi snapped back.

Sho smiled that noncommittal, tried and tested smile of his. “Survival first. _Diplomacy_ second.”

—

He had never really considered himself the claustrophobic sort, but after the time they’d spent in the pod and now all these hours in the cave, he was starting to change his tune. 

The only good thing about being stranded inside the damp cave was that Sho wasn’t as much of a stickler for “diplomacy second” as he initially had promised. Satoshi had woken the following morning to yet another feeding session. It was sort of humiliating having to sit there, a grown man, and let someone else feed him, but he supposed it had its benefits. Like the brushes of Sho’s fingers against his mouth.

And then there were the obligatory bandage checks, Sho’s hands gentle and a little nervous and unsteady as he rubbed in antibiotic gels and creams, replacing the old bandages with clean ones. There was a startling lack of efficiency when it came to Sho’s version of medical care, his hands lingering on Satoshi’s skin long after the creams had been administered.

It wasn’t until the second day stuck inside that Sho allowed Satoshi to move around a bit more. He was allowed to stand up, even if the cave ceiling was only a few inches taller than he was. Sho had to bend a little to keep from knocking his skull against it. He was allowed to move around, move his arms. It stung, but he supposed if he wasn’t on any sort of pain medication that it would be even worse.

He made a big show of strutting around in his trunks, waving off Sho’s offer of a clean pair of thermal slacks and a shirt. “Hot under the blankets all day,” he lied, walking around and feeling his nipples harden, feeling goosebumps rise on his skin. He stretched and exercised, Sho sitting on the cave floor doing his best to ignore him, tinkering with the battery packs he’d salvaged from their otherwise damaged scanners. Their remaining scanner would at least have back-up power sources.

“Sho-kun,” he said.

“Sit down, you’ll catch cold,” Sho mumbled, not looking up from his work.

“Sho-kun, I think I’ll be able to feed myself tonight. You know, just like a toddler. I feel good.”

“Glad to hear it. Sit down.”

He knelt down before Sho, slipping the tools out of his hands. “Let’s go east.”

Sho raised an eyebrow. “This again? The next predator out there will bite your leg off, and still you’ll be saying to continue east. We’re going to the pod, even if I have to carry you there myself.”

“That seems way more inefficient than walking beside me when we go east.”

“You’re being childish. It’s a good thing for Akatsuki that your sister was born first,” Sho complained, although he was having a bit of difficulty keeping his eyes on Satoshi’s face. 

“The scanner says there’s a freshwater stream ten kilometers east,” Satoshi pointed out. With all his free time, he’d practically memorized the readouts on their remaining scanner. “And where is the nearest water source in the opposite direction, hmm?”

Sho narrowed his eyes. “The spring. The spring back by the valley. Don’t you dare…”

“Sho-kun, we’ll need to replenish our water earlier than we anticipated. There was all the water we lost in the fight. More than a week’s worth! And then we gave up two days of reserves sitting in here.”

“Because you were severely injured!”

He leaned forward. “I’m feeling much better. Thanks to your tender bedside manner.”

“Have you always been this bad at flirting or am I a special case?”

Satoshi smiled. “You know I’m right about this. Yesterday all you could think about was the beacon, but now you have to face the reality of the remaining supplies. We go back to the pod, we have whatever medical supplies we’re carrying with us right now. There’s nothing there we didn’t take with us. We take our chances east, we still might be able to negotiate or trade for something. The pod had a limited power and oxygen supply remaining anyhow. Once that runs out, we either sleep with the pod hatch open, inviting in all sorts of dangers, or we suffocate inside.”

“We might be rescued before then.”

“And if we aren’t, we’re right back where we started but with only one scanner, very little medical help, and an abundance of cow shit.”

“I don’t like it.”

He leaned forward even more, his mouth inches from Sho’s. “We could nix both plans and live together forever in this cave. Romantic, no?” 

Sho laughed. “I think I’d rather suffocate in the pod.”

“Have you always been this bad at flirting?” Satoshi teased, lifting his hand to Sho’s face and stroking his thumb along the corner of his mouth. “Or am I a special case?”

This time Sho moved first, capturing his mouth in a searing kiss. Satoshi had a feeling that he was going to get his way. Both because of logic and because of his obvious skills in diplomacy. 

Ignoring the light throb of pain on either side of his chest, he got off of his knees, breaking their kiss to climb onto Sho’s lap. He brought his hand around the back of Sho’s neck, kissing him again, sighing in contentment as he threaded his fingers through Sho’s soft hair. For his part, Sho all but clung to him, hands pressed hard against his back.

Sho, who’d always seemed so proper, let loose a bit, breaking their kiss so he could instead press his mouth to Satoshi’s neck, leaving a damp trail of heat down his throat, sucking gently here and there, marking and claiming. He gasped, letting Sho do whatever he wanted. This would have probably been more comfortable on board the Miyabi. Stars, even the pod would have been better than a cave, but he’d always been the type to take what he could get whenever he could get it.

Things weren’t quite equal, though, and eventually Satoshi grew impatient, moving his fingers to the zipper of Sho’s jacket, tugging it down. His shirt was gone after that, and Satoshi appreciated the view. Pale skin, firm muscles, and this time he wasn’t looking just to change a bandage. All of it his to claim.

He gave Sho a little push and they moved as best they could, back onto the stars-forsaken parachute to cushion them a little. Satoshi kissed his way down, hearing Sho’s appreciative whimpers as he ventured around with his mouth down Sho’s neck, nipping at his collarbone. His mouth closed around Sho’s hardened nipple, and Sho’s moan echoed in the cave. Well, he supposed the cave was good for something. He alternated between teasing with his teeth and sucking until Sho grew impatient.

Sho was arching up under him, and he liked that Sho wanted him just as badly. Sho was unashamedly hard, his erection tenting his pants. Satoshi was pleased with what he found, touching Sho through the fabric with his fingertips, stroking unhurriedly along the solid length of him. With a little more maneuvering, Sho’s pants and briefs were out of the way when he couldn’t take much more of Satoshi’s teasing.

If someone had told him a little more than a week ago that he was going to suck off the Crown Prince of Kagerou in a bleak little cave on Rakuen, he’d have recommended that person be sent to a hospital for a brain scan.

“Please,” Sho begged once Satoshi started to stroke him. “Please please…”

Princes so rarely said please, and Satoshi considered himself an expert on the subject. He decided to be obliging. After so many miserable days, so many days walking through the cold, so many days subsisting on tasteless protein bars and water, he just wanted to forget Rakuen for a little while. Forget everything but Sho.

He lost himself in the motions, the heat of Sho’s body, the thick glide of Sho’s hot cock along his tongue as he indulged himself. Sho’s eager, encouraging moans had him halfway to coming without even a brush of Sho’s hand against him. He heard his name echoing off the cave wall, forgetting the pain, forgetting their uncertain futures.

Unlike all of their negotiations on Akatsuki, things were far more equal between them now. Satoshi had barely finishing swallowing Sho’s come when he was being moved, eased onto his back. He hoped they’d have a chance to do this again and hopefully without an evil space bird attack to prompt it next time.

He shut his eyes, biting his lip in satisfaction as soon as Sho’s perfect lips settled around him. His body tingled with pleasurable sensations, Sho’s tongue working miracles around the head of his cock while his fingertips tickled across his abdomen, down his thighs. 

If only all the disagreements between Kagerou and Akatsuki could be solved this easily.

—

They didn’t dare linger come morning, even if it was tempting to do so. Sho took on the heavier pack this time, although he made no comment about it being heavier in the first place. They had a lot of ground to cover, and no time to waste.

Even after their night together, Satoshi couldn’t allow himself to lose focus. What they’d shared was amazing, but there wouldn’t be a next time if they didn’t travel carefully, stay alert. Sho, being Sho, was able to snap back into a logical mode as well, even if some of the looks they exchanged while they hiked could have easily melted the snowflakes floating along in the breeze around them.

Sho took the lead, leaving Satoshi to plot their course with the help of the scanner. He wasn’t at full strength, especially since he’d cut back on the pain medication in order to stay awake and alert. If something attacked, Sho would have to do most of the work to hold them off.

They made it to the stream just after midday, even with Satoshi’s condition slowing them down. They’d finally emerged from the forest, finding hillier terrain ahead. There would no longer be any large trees to shelter them, but at least they’d be able to see threats coming from further away. Just over the next hill or a little bit further on was where the kaenium heat signature still pulsed, stronger with every step forward.

While Sho refilled the bottles steadily, Satoshi monitored the scanner. One of the massive birds had flown overhead back in the forest, but thankfully it hadn’t been in a snacking mood.

“We’ll have to keep it quiet,” Sho said without prompting, twisting the cap back on a bottle.

“Huh?” he asked, looking up from the scanner screen.

“This thing between us. It can’t be made public.”

Satoshi grinned, seeing the nervous look on Sho’s face. Very different from the night before. Seeing Satoshi in the daylight had brought him back to reality. “Sho-kun, perhaps you’ve forgotten that I’m also a member of a royal family.”

“I haven’t forgotten that…”

“Let’s just say I’m used to keeping my relationships quiet.”

“Have there been many?”

Sho’s jealous blush had Satoshi close to laughing, but he figured Sho wasn’t in a joking mood. It was cute though.

“There haven’t been,” he admitted truthfully. Ever since his father’s abdication and his sister’s rise to the throne, there’d been so much work to do that looking for a relationship or even a fling had not been at the top of his list. “And you, Your Highness? You’re quite the catch on Kagerou, I presume?”

Sho filled another bottle, face reddening all the more and not just because of the chill. “I’ve managed to dodge my obligations so far. It helps that my younger sister has married and already has two children. But of course I can’t avoid it forever.”

With the birth of Mina’s son, Satoshi’s importance to the Ohno family succession had dropped. And he’d been glad of it. His nephew’s birth had granted him a type of freedom that a Crown Prince, an heir like Sho, would never have. He understood that better than anyone else could. And more importantly, he accepted that about Sho. All of that seemed so inconsequential anyway, sitting here beside a Rakuen stream, thousands of miles from their duties and obligations as royal sons.

But nothing was ever inconsequential to someone like Sho, who had taken on the role of perfect son, perfect prince and had played it all his life.

“You told me that you trusted me,” Satoshi said quietly. “And I have no intention of doing anything that might change your mind about that.”

“I just…if we’re rescued, I don’t want you to think this means nothing. Even if we can’t…” 

Sho had trouble getting the cap onto the bottle, Satoshi reaching out to twist it for him. He handed it back, squeezing Sho’s hand to reassure him. 

“This is important,” Sho continued. “This is important to me.”

“It’s important to me, too,” he said simply, getting to his feet. He checked the scanner readout again, frowning. “The storm we’ve been monitoring is moving faster. We should get going.”

If the scanner was accurate, it meant that a snow storm was incoming. They’d have marched right into it if they’d headed back for the pod. The odds were slightly better heading east, but it wasn’t entirely avoidable. The shelter they found that night would determine their course of action.

“Then let’s get moving,” Sho said.

They walked for another hour, slowly but steadily making their way uphill. If the scanner was correct, they’d reach the settlement quite soon. It was likely just on the other side of the hill. The heat signature was stronger than anything they’d seen on Rakuen thus far. But as they came to the top of the hill, their confusion grew. Stretching on into the distance as far as they could see was bluish grass covering rolling hills, swaying with the breeze. 

No city. No buildings. No roads.

No sign of human habitation whatsoever, but still the heat signature lingered, throbbed with intensity on the scanner screen.

Satoshi turned, looking back behind them. Large looming clouds had followed them every step of the way that day. And they were giving every indication of a major storm, not just a dusting of snow.

Sho had his hands on his hips. “It’s right here.”

“Yes.”

He took a step forward, disbelieving. “It’s kaenium. They’re burning kaenium. But where?”

“Are we absolutely certain it’s kaenium?” Satoshi asked nervously. After all, Sho had wanted to go back to the pod. It was only Satoshi’s continued insistence on going east that had brought them here only to find nothing. “What if something’s messing with the sensors?”

“Like what?”

“I…I don’t know,” he mumbled. Sho was the one with all the extra education. “Seismic activity? Lava channels underground?”

Sho’s look was dubious. He adjusted the pack on his back, shaking his head as he kept walking forward. He’d only gone a few steps before he collided with something hard. He stumbled back, falling down with a cry of shock.

“Sho-kun!”

He moved over, crouching down beside him. Sho’s face was the picture of astonishment. Sho pointed forward. “It’s…it’s not real…”

“Are you okay?” Satoshi asked.

“It’s not real,” Sho repeated, and this time when Satoshi looked over, he could see that it was true.

As far as they could see, the bluish hills went on all the way to the horizon. But where Sho had met resistance, now Satoshi saw it. He saw the ripple. Setting down his pack and taking out a bottle of water, he approached carefully.

The view was distorted. The “skyline” now had a small crack in it, a flickering light shining through. “Sho-kun…you’re not going to believe this.”

“It’s like a screen,” Sho said, his voice awed. “Satoshi-kun, it’s a screen, we did find them.”

Satoshi twisted the cap off of the water bottle. He then tossed a fair amount of water in the direction of the ripple. It should have fallen down to the grass. Instead it ran into an invisible wall, droplets streaking down the apparently fake image of hills and grass. He followed the trail of droplets, seeing where the grass and dirt he was currently standing on met resistance. Where the reality of Rakuen stopped and illusion began. He wondered how far the wall went. Something like this…it would need an incredible amount of power to operate. 

Hence the massive kaenium heat signature.

He reached out with his boot, nudging with his toe. Hard, as hard as steel. He gave it a gentle little kick, and though the wall easily withstood it, the image projected on it didn’t. It cracked just as easily as it had where Sho had collided with it, the grass flickering. “Gotcha,” he whispered to himself.

He turned back around, laughing. 

And that was when the ground beneath their feet opened up and swallowed them.

—

Thankfully it hadn’t been a straight drop down. Instead he and Sho had both screamed their way down a slippery metal slide, their packs careening down at a high speed right along with them in absolute darkness. They bumped into each other, Sho’s hand trying to hold onto him as they moved, but they were sliding too quickly.

A hatch eventually opened, and they slid with little grace off of it and onto an unforgiving metal floor along with their packs and the water bottle Satoshi had been holding onto. It thumped to the floor next to him, water spilling out into a puddle as they took in their new surroundings. He supposed a sore ass was better than being dead.

“They have a trap door,” Sho was mumbling in disbelief beside him. “They have a massive projection screen outside hundreds of feet high…and they have a trap door.”

The room was sterile, and reminded him of an airlock. Just on a grander scale. The room was artificially-lit with metallic walls, the chute they’d just come down sealing shut behind them with a noisy whoosh. There was a set of double doors on the wall ahead of them, a small control panel beside it. This was all built by humans.

The soothing and familiar dual hums of flowing air and kaenium engines explained things rather easily. There were people living on Rakuen, but they lived underground. He wondered if this was true of other continents, including the ones previously visited by science teams. He wondered if they really wanted to be found.

An intercom buzzed somewhere on the left wall, a polite and very much human female voice coming through a speaker. The voice was clearly asking them a question, but the language spoken was not one Satoshi knew. He looked over at Sho, who was equally puzzled. While there were regional dialects unique to Akatsuki and Kagerou, they both spoke the same language. The only one known to them.

“I’m sorry,” Sho replied. He slowly got to his feet, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “We do not speak your language.”

The intercom buzzed again. The voice seemed to repeat the same sounds, the same question, but slower, as though speaking slower would solve the problem. Thankfully, the voice did not sound hostile. She actually sounded a bit friendly.

Sho kept his hands up, speaking slowly and clearly. “My name is Sakurai Sho. I am from the planet Kagerou. This is Ohno Satoshi. He is from the planet Akatsuki. We mean you no harm, and we are stranded here. Does anyone in this place speak our language?”

The intercom buzzed. This time the message was rather short. And then the speaker turned off altogether.

And nothing happened.

Sho lowered his hands. “Maybe that’s a good sign?”

Nearly an hour went by, so Satoshi wondered what was going on. The hatch leading outside remained shut. The air circulated, the lights stayed on. The double doors stayed closed, and a quick examination of the control panel was unhelpful. It wasn’t lit up or seemingly active in any way. Sho tried to use their scanner, but it had cracked against the chute on the way down and was now broken. Useless. 

Whatever happened now, they were at the mercy of the people who had captured them.

They ate their protein bars, sipped their water. What else could they do?

Finally, there was another crackle of static over the intercom. The woman who had spoken previously was not there. This time it was a man’s voice, an almost whimsical, breathy voice. And this man spoke their language.

Sort of.

He sounded very uncertain. “Good morning, you guests are here. Humbly thanking you.”

Satoshi and Sho exchanged a confused look. It had been mid-afternoon outside before they’d fallen down the chute.

The voice continued. “You place…you place is not Rakuen. Forgiveness requested. You guests, I inquire to you. You place is not Rakuen?”

Sho got back to his feet, jumping right back into diplomat mode while Satoshi stayed where he was, munching on a protein bar in case it was their last meal.

“Our place is not Rakuen,” Sho said slowly. “I am from the planet Kagerou. My friend is from Akatsuki. Our places are very far from here. We do not mean you any harm.”

“Distance wide, distance very wide!”

“Yes,” Sho said, a little nervously. “Distance very wide. May I ask your name?”

The voice was patient. “This place being called Rakuen. Planet of Rakuen.”

“Yes,” Sho said. “I understand, thank you. You, the person speaking to me right now. What are you called? What is your name?”

“Ah! It is the asking of this persona.” Satoshi heard the man muttering in his own language, possibly to someone else outside the room. He then returned, doing his best in their language. “This persona belonging to Aiba Masaki.”

“Aiba Masaki,” Sho acknowledged. “Thank you for speaking with us. We apologize for causing trouble to you.”

“Trouble?” There was more muttering. “You guests…we are being…um…you guests. Forgiveness requested.”

Sho stood by patiently, looking over and gesturing for Satoshi to get up and stand properly. He did so, nervously getting to his feet while “Aiba Masaki” continued chattering away rapid fire with other people in his own language.

“Sakurai Sho?” came Aiba’s voice again.

“Yes!”

“Sakurai Sho. Ohno Satoshi. Guests.” Satoshi wondered how Aiba even knew this much of their language to communicate with them. “Starting with we must cleaning.”

“Cleaning?” Sho asked.

“Yes, yes, cleaning. This place…this place is the clean place. Are you possible to understanding this persona? This place is the clean place. We must cleaning…we must cleaning…of guests.”

“You…need to clean us?” Satoshi muttered.

Sho’s eyes widened in understanding. He was probably very good at charades. “You mean that you have a quarantine procedure! We are outsiders. In order to enter your place, we must be clean? Am I correct?”

Aiba’s voice was really excited when he spoke again. “Yes, yes! Cleaning! We will quartering you!”

“Quarantine,” Sho repeated.

“Quartering?”

“Quar-an-tine.”

Aiba’s strange, breathy laugh charmed Satoshi quite easily. “Quar-an-tine. This persona is understanding of Sakurai Sho’s languages at current time. Do not have a fright, please. Also this persona is requesting you to…” There was more muttering. “…requesting you to not anger for the waiting. Is agreement with Ohno Satoshi?”

“I think he means ‘please be patient,’” Sho whispered for Satoshi’s hearing alone.

“Ah, thank you! Agreement!” Satoshi called out. “Thank you, Aiba Masaki!”

“Quar-an-tine,” Aiba repeated. “Not anger for the waiting. Good morning!”

The intercom went off once more. All he and Sho could do was look at each other and laugh.

—

A medical team in hazmat gear entered the room where they were being held after a wait of nearly two hours. None of the medics seemed to have Aiba’s tenuous grasp of their language, but they were patient, gesturing for Satoshi and Sho to follow them. Another member of their team came to collect their belongings.

The room they’d been held in was one of several in a long, well-lit white corridor. Perhaps this whole level was isolated from the rest of their community. At the end, he and Sho were ushered into another room where they were asked to remove their clothing and enter shower-like chambers. They did as ordered, the eyes of the medics widening a little when they saw the bandaging on Sho’s side, the bandaging on Satoshi’s chest. 

They were sprayed with some sort of chemical inside the shower, and though it stung a little, he simply endured it if it meant that Aiba and his people might help them. The medical team then asked them to wait in another room, where they were able to relieve themselves and get dressed in clean clothes. They were provided with white clothing a bit similar to the thermal gear that had been in the pod along with soft slippers. But as Satoshi examined the garments, he noticed that the fabric was finer than anything he’d ever seen, even the clothing Sho had been wearing on the Miyabi.

It seemed that the people of Aiba’s community were technologically advanced, far ahead of even Kagerou. He could see how impressed Sho was, his fingers tracing down his sleeve as he marveled at the new clothing.

Once they were dressed, they were brought to an elevator which descended even further. Just how far underground did the people of Rakuen live? They were no longer accompanied by people in hazmat-like gear. Instead the people were similarly dressed in the white tops and slacks, their feet clad in the same slippers. It reminded Satoshi of the sterile environment of Kagerou’s domed cities, but on a simpler scale. Kagerou was cold and artificial. Even with the white clothes, the white corridors, the white rooms, this place still had a warmth to it. It was obvious in the nervous but friendly smiles of the people who didn’t speak their language but helped them just the same. It was obvious in the way Aiba Masaki had done his best to communicate with them, to reassure them that they had nothing to fear.

They were escorted to what seemed like a waiting room with simple furniture. Plush chairs, a sofa. A sideboard was covered in food that didn’t look all too foreign. A pot of rice, a pot of warm broth that smelled delicious. A salad with leafy greens and plump tomatoes. The greens were actually blue, similar to the grasses on the planet’s surface, but otherwise the texture and appearance was similar.

The staff gestured for them to help themselves and then left them alone. He and Sho dug in, grateful for something that wasn’t a protein bar. There wasn’t a lot of added seasoning to the food, giving it a blander taste that reminded him of the food he’d had on Kagerou, but it was well-prepared. Akatsuki people just preferred stronger flavors, lots of spices. He wondered if that lack of interest in intensity just came along with living in isolation, whether it was inside a dome or deep underground.

When their bellies were full, they sat together on the sofa in the room. He wanted to reach out, take Sho’s hand. Squeeze and reassure him that they would be alright. But then again, he didn’t know who might be watching. With all their technology, it was likely they were being observed closely. Their laser pistols had not been returned, neither had anything else in their packs. Perhaps it had all been destroyed as part of the quarantine procedure.

Sho looked over, smiling nervously. “How are you holding up?”

He leaned back against the couch cushion, shrugging. “If they fed us and clothed us and gave us those stinging chemical showers, I don’t think they mean any harm.”

“I don’t think they do either,” Sho admitted. “But we have to stay cautious, agreed?”

“Of course,” he said.

When the interior door of the waiting room slid open, a tall, slim man walked in, a device similar to a CompTab in his hand. There were a handful of people behind him, advisors from the look of them since they all had CompTabs and intelligent but wary expressions on their faces. The man had a kind face with curious eyes and a ready smile. He spoke to the people around him with certainty and confidence. Perhaps he was a diplomat of some sort, given his language abilities.

And the voice was easily recognizable as Aiba Masaki’s. There was none of the stumbling that characterized the conversation over the intercom. He gave firm commands in his own language to his people, gesturing a few times in his and Sho’s direction. When one of the advisors seemed to make a complaint, Aiba rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder, reassuring her with a soft squeeze and a gentle laugh.

He’d seemingly dismissed them, all of them, so he could talk to Satoshi and Sho all alone. The advisors departed, and Aiba approached. He and Sho rose from the couch, bowing respectfully.

Satoshi looked up, saw that Aiba had duplicated their gesture to be respectful. When he and Sho rose, Aiba seemed to figure that he could as well.

He nodded to them, gesturing that they could sit again while Aiba himself had a seat in one of the chairs, resting the CompTab in his lap. He pointed to it, smiling.

“The languages you speak of the Old Planet,” Aiba explained. “This is not the languages of us here, you are understanding?”

“You call it the Old Planet too?” Sho asked.

Aiba nodded. “In the languages of here, yes, it is the same words to be used. The educators of this setting, there is possessing of a…forgiveness requested, there is possessing of a words…archive. The words archive allowing this persona to do the conversation with Sakurai Sho and Ohno Satoshi. I study words archive as part of this persona’s occupation, but I am…lacking of regular usage.”

Sho turned to him. “They have a dictionary of our language.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Satoshi teased. “I’m not that stupid.”

“We are very grateful for your assistance,” Sho said, and they watched Aiba’s gaze dip briefly down to the screen of his CompTab. Presumably there was some translation software that was converting their words into something Aiba could better understand.

“Guests…there has never been the journey of guests to this place. Forgiveness requested, this place is of the calling ‘Chiba.’”

“Your city is called Chiba,” Sho replied, nodding in understanding. It sounded familiar to Satoshi…like some place from the Old Planet.

“City,” Aiba repeated, nodding with a smile. “The words are sounding appropriate.”

“Thank you for the food,” Satoshi said, and Aiba laughed in shock. “Huh?”

“Forgiveness requested,” Aiba said, blushing a bit. “Your words ‘food,’ it is in close resembling to word we possessing in Chiba as…um, persona’s anus waste.”

So apparently ‘food’ sounded similar to ‘shit’ around here. However long their visit was, Satoshi decided that he would have to remember not to ask for ‘food.’

He, Sho, and Aiba had a good long laugh at that. It was remarkable what could bring people together.

He mostly let Sho handle the talking. It was slow-going, with Sho having to repeat words so that Aiba’s CompTab could try and translate them on the fly. It was still remarkable how well Aiba was able to communicate with them, given that nobody on the planet was a native speaker of their language. All they had to go on was their dictionary, their words archive of the apparently “ancient” and “dead” language of the Old Planet.

Sho explained the circumstances of the escape pod, where they’d crashed and the troubles they had encountered on their journey. The cows and the attacking birds, the cold weather and the concerns about their beacons. For his part, Aiba explained that Chiba was one of only six settlements on the entire planet, all of them descendants of people who had arrived from the Old Planet centuries earlier. Isolated, their language had evolved and changed until it no longer resembled what it now was on Akatsuki or Kagerou.

Aiba knew that outsider science missions had come to Rakuen before, but they preferred their isolation. Even Chiba rarely communicated with the other cities on Rakuen. The people had lived on the surface in the early days, but had migrated underground due to the harsh weather and the deadly animals. Aiba considered them both “very having of the positive luck” for only having encountered the space cows and evil space birds. Aiba had given them the creatures’ names, but Satoshi was perfectly content to stick with space cows and evil space birds. He wasn’t too keen on learning what other nasty things were out there ready to chew him up either.

Aiba admitted that Chiba’s sensors had detected them a while ago, at least from the time they’d been in the forest and come into range. The only reason they’d been granted admission to the city was because of the approaching blizzard. The people of Chiba were wary of outsiders, but kind-hearted enough to not let two fellow humans freeze to death just on their doorstep.

“Do you know if any other outsiders have come looking for us?” Sho asked nervously. “If any ships from our planets have come to rescue us?”

Aiba shook his head. “You are telling this persona of the…you call the ‘beacon’ from the escaping pod? Forgiveness requested, Sakurai Sho, but there is not possibility of the finding you with such device. This persona deeply sadness to explaining that Chiba has technological in place to make such beacon unworking in very large range.”

“You deliberately blocked the signal from our beacon? All this time?” Satoshi cried. Sho gave him a sharp look, and Aiba looked rather embarrassed.

“Deeply sadness,” Aiba muttered. “Many years, common thought is we are not of the need to be discovery by outsiders. You are understanding.”

Satoshi shut his eyes. If they’d gone back to the pod, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Chiba would still have been blocking it. They’d have never been found there. Had Nino and Jun already come and gone? Were they stuck here now? Forever?

“Aiba-san,” Sho said, trying to ease the darker mood that had settled over the room. “We have no intention of causing problems for Chiba. We just want to go home. Is there any way you can get us back to our pod, allow our beacon to go through? We will not interfere with your city or your people.”

“My people are not of total certainty in answers. But I am authority persona, so it is of my answers to give.”

“Wait,” Satoshi interrupted. “Authority persona?”

Aiba’s eyes widened in understanding. “Forgiveness requested! I have the lacking of the introducing. My people, they are eternally chiding this persona for so casual. You, Sakurai Sho, you are authority persona of Kagerou, yes? You, Ohno Satoshi, you are authority persona of Akatsuki?”

“Just a moment…you’re a _prince_?” Sho said. All along they’d assumed that Aiba was simply the person in Chiba who was strongest in communicating in their language. But he was actually in charge of this place?!

Aiba checked his CompTab. “Words archive saying that I am of the higher authority persona. Your languages…your languages…word is to be known as ‘King.’”

Satoshi and Sho exchanged startled glances. They immediately got off of the sofa, kneeling down before him. It was now obvious that Aiba outranked them. And Satoshi had just yelled at him!

“Your Majesty,” they both mumbled, lowering their heads.

“Stopping, stopping,” Aiba said, setting his CompTab aside and joining them on the floor. He patted them each on the shoulder, his touch firm but reassuring. “Stopping.”

“We’ve been rude,” Sho mumbled.

“Forgiveness requested,” Satoshi added.

“Stopping. Get to the seat. Stopping this.”

Once they were seated again, Aiba looked at them with a serious expression. 

“My people, it is a fright, the outside. Long timing in this place, you understanding? Rakuen, it is a difficult, but here we are peace. But when only peace, when only stasis, no chances for the knowledge. You speaking with this persona…this persona never has imagined it. This persona stumbling to speak your languages. Stumbling, it is not a wise Chiba when stumbling. Help to Sakurai Sho, help to Ohno Satoshi…it is a fright, but Kagerou. Akatsuki. Chiba. All of us coming the Old Planet, you understanding?”

“You’ll help us?” Sho asked.

“Yes. This persona wants not a stasis Chiba, but a wise Chiba. This persona helps.”


	5. Chapter 5

Language barriers aside, Aiba Masaki, King of Rakuen’s Chiba, got right to work. He and Sho were immediately ushered to a massive control room. Comp screens were monitoring the blizzard passing overhead, scanning for animal activity, and dozens of other tasks he didn’t have a chance to check out as Aiba and his council of advisors escorted them around the underground community.

The first task completed was the matter of the beacon. With the help of his engineering team, Aiba did his best to explain how communication would be possible. Instead of the escape pod’s faint beacon, Chiba’s broadcast had the capability of breaking through the atmospheric interference. Even though they’d never seen much need to use the ability before, Chiba was willing to activate it on their behalf.

Instead of sending out a pulse with an unfamiliar pattern, the engineers explained that Sho and Satoshi could record messages that would repeat on a loop along with coordinates. When Sho nervously asked how long Chiba was willing to keep up the broadcast, Aiba’s answer had been firm.

“Until the rescuing,” he’d said, his advisors looking a little concerned but not angry. 

It became abundantly clear that Aiba Masaki was very popular here. As they walked through the corridors, he knew many people by name, shaking hands and offering smiles. Which was a marvel since Chiba was home to nearly a hundred thousand people.

Once the broadcast was recorded, a simple message with Sho and Satoshi announcing that they were alive, that they were safe, and that they awaited rescue, they received a grander tour.

Aiba wanted to know everything there was to know about Akatsuki and Kagerou, and he and Sho agreed to meet with him again come morning. Satoshi couldn’t see much reason why - Chiba was so far ahead of them technology-wise, he wasn’t sure what was worth teaching them. 

The underground city had been thriving for centuries. It covered a vast amount of territory under the surface, more than a dozen levels where people worked and lived. The walls that surrounded their territory were mostly a deterrent for the hostile animal life. In this part of Rakuen, few other humans ever came calling. Chiba was on a different continent, a vast ocean away from the nearest settlement. It had isolated them but had also made them self-sufficient.

There were greenhouses and entire farms underground, generators and mines, hospitals and schools. The rooms they’d been in so far were only a fraction of the bustling settlement. Their population was controlled carefully, to the extent that men and women had to apply and be interviewed before attempting to conceive. There was a degree of government control here that worried Satoshi a little, but everyone they encountered seemed fairly content and from their eyes, from their faces, they didn’t seem to be faking it. They were cooperative people rather than rebellious ones. 

He supposed that having nearly limitless resources at their disposal would make anyone cooperative. Akatsuki and Kagerou had never had such luxuries. And they never would, not likely to this extent at least.

Sho explained to Aiba how they’d found their way to Chiba, tracing the heat signature. He asked about their kaenium mines. To their surprise, the word on Rakuen for kaenium was exactly the same. They descended deep into the ground, finding the kaenium processing facilities.

Satoshi hung back, simply nodding to workers, hoping he appeared friendly. Most of them had eyes for their king anyway, smiling and waving as Aiba passed by, asking questions about their work. Aiba may have been their leader, but he dressed the same as them. He had no royal jewels, no items on his person that set him apart. He had advisors with him, certainly, but no bodyguards. He looked at each of his people with respect, with thoughtfulness. He had nothing to fear from them.

It was clear even from this short visit that he was a ruler in constant motion, always among the people. Always asking questions. Always listening. Satoshi felt an odd sort of guilt, seeing the way Aiba behaved. He looked over, could see equal astonishment in Sho’s face.

Aiba and Sho started chatting, and Aiba was relying heavily on his CompTab as they spoke. Ah, Satoshi realized. Sho was nagging him about the kaenium. It was obvious that Chiba would have a more sophisticated process than Kagerou. He watched the conversation from afar, feeling more out of place than he had in a long time. 

Satoshi had promised to help Sho. But he wasn’t much help at all now, was he? 

He turned to one of Aiba’s advisors who’d come down with them. He smiled shyly, making a gesture that he hoped conveyed the idea of sleep. She nodded in reply, repeating the gesture and saying whatever the word for it was in their language. He nodded, not knowing what to say.

The advisor called out to Aiba, and they spoke for a moment. Aiba waved to Satoshi kindly, and then the advisor escorted him to the elevator.

He was led to a guest room that had been prepared for him, simple but comfortable accommodations. A bed and a small washroom with a shower, toilet, and sink. He was left alone, the door sliding closed behind the advisor and other staff that had prepared the room for him. There was a CompStation and a chair, and he had a seat. 

None of the words on the screen made a bit of sense, so he just poked around, finding a map of the Chiba underground complex. He stared at it, feeling rather useless. He knew he ought to be thrilled. Chiba had isolated themselves for centuries, and yet they were going out of their way to help. If anyone was coming to rescue them, they’d know what to do now.

He gave up on trying to read the foreign language, heading to the washroom. He gingerly pulled the shirt up and over his head, his body still aching a little from the attack. It had only been a few days since it had happened, but it felt like a lifetime ago. After the chemical shower in quarantine, he hadn’t bothered to ask for new bandaging. He looked at the scars left behind, poking with his fingertips at the still slightly tender flesh. His souvenirs from Rakuen.

He sighed, pulling the shirt back on. Self-pity was a waste of time, and he was fortunate to be here. Safe. Warm. Fed. He got into the bed, sighing at the sudden comfort after so many days without it. Turning out the lights, he hoped that Sho was getting some of the answers he needed.

—

A proper night’s sleep made a world of difference. He was met by Aiba’s staffers in the morning, who waited for him to shower and dress and then escorted him to breakfast with their king.

Sho was already there, trying out a few phrases in the Rakuen language. Whatever he was being taught to say, it was making Aiba laugh hysterically. Leave it to Sho to be the perfect and charming prince.

“Good night!” Aiba said cheerfully, waving for Satoshi to sit down.

Sho chuckled. “You’ve got those backwards. Good night is for evening, when people are departing. Good morning is a greeting for earlier in the day.”

Aiba looked down at the CompTab beside him, turning a bit red in embarrassment as it translated Sho’s words. “There is much of the practicing ahead.”

“Good night, Your Majesty,” Satoshi said anyhow, inclining his head and having a seat. Aiba offered him a rather grateful smile in reply.

He and Sho ate quietly while Aiba’s advisors got him up to speed on the day’s issues. Since they were speaking quickly in their own language, they didn’t seem to be bothered that outsiders were sitting around the table with their king during a private meeting. In between bites, Aiba signed paperwork, made jokes, and asked questions of his advisors. The only words Satoshi understood were “Kagerou” and “Akatsuki,” which meant that Aiba was probably asking if any ships had been spotted nearby. 

The answer didn’t need a translation. The answer was obviously “no, not yet.”

When the three of them were left alone again, there was an announcement. “Satoshi-kun,” Sho said, looking rather pleased. “Aiba-san and I have spoken about kaenium and the mining industry here in Chiba. The theory that was only just proven in the Kagerou labs about kaenium processing has been in successful practice here for over a century!”

“Sho telling us about your mining people, Satoshi. It is a shaming practice to your people,” Aiba said to him, face clearly sympathetic. “Overwork. Poor paying. A shaming practice. There is not that overwork here. Respect for all occupations.”

He was a little surprised to hear that. He had assumed Sho would have only asked about the kaenium mining for his own benefit - why would he even tell Aiba, an outsider, that Kagerou had been exploiting Akatsuki’s people for so long? Why would Chiba want to help a Kagerou like that?

But then again, perhaps a person like Aiba Masaki preferred honesty to playing political games.

“What does this mean for Kagerou then? And Akatsuki?” Satoshi asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sho admitted. “Aiba-san has kindly agreed to share data from their production facilities. There are technology specs that go along with them but…well…”

“All is in my languages,” Aiba said with a chuckle. “If King of Kagerou not anger for the waiting, happiness to do translating. Sho and I, we will work with the words archive and with the…with the…”

“Mining engineers. From both Chiba and Kagerou,” Sho supplied.

“Mining engineers! We work together, all together for the translating. Then Kagerou use technology and Kagerou mining improve. And as Kagerou mining improve, Akatsuki is respect. Sho says Akatsuki respect the high imperative of all, and this persona agree!”

He was struck dumb, seeing Sho busy himself with his breakfast, his attention anywhere else but on Satoshi. Now he knew why Aiba had so readily agreed to help. He was helping because something as simple as technology specs, translated and put into practice, would create a better life and better opportunities…for Akatsuki. Sure, it would also be to Kagerou’s benefit, an increased efficiency in their processes, but Sho had fought for Satoshi’s people more than his own.

“Thank you,” he said, voice trembling with the weight of the help Aiba wanted to offer him. To a complete stranger. Stars, to two planets full of strangers. Sure, to Chiba it was probably not a big deal, but the technology would end the strike. The technology would keep the peace. “It would be an honor to host you on Akatsuki at any time. After what you’ve offered to do to help my people…”

Aiba waved his hand, a bit embarrassed to be praised. “Traveling…traveling is not…”

“Further diplomatic relations are not quite on the table yet,” Sho said. “Chiba is not opening itself up to trade or political alliances. This potential sharing of mining technology and this data is offered only as a kindness. Aiba-san’s people are very wary of change. Sharing this doesn’t change their way of life. But if my father pushes for more, the deal’s off the table.”

“Chiba not going to have the wide open. Not yet,” Aiba agreed. “Footsteps of the infant, you understanding.”

Baby steps, Satoshi translated in his head, grinning. He was fine with baby steps. And he was quite sure Mina would find these baby steps rather agreeable as well. 

It was really all up to Kagerou’s king now, presuming that Satoshi and Sho were rescued. Kagerou’s king and his House of Councillors, whose members had been so suspicious of their Crown Prince. Would they be willing to change their ways? Would they be willing to accept help from a people who otherwise wished to be left alone? Would they still consider Sho a traitor, even with the deal he’d just brokered here on Rakuen?

Satoshi had been wrong. Stars, he’d been so wrong. Sho still needed his help. Perhaps Sho needed it now more than ever.

They finished breakfast and spent the rest of the morning telling Aiba about their respective homes. The luxuries of Kagerou’s domes, the peaceful farms of Akatsuki. They spoke of their families and friends, their hobbies and lives. They learned about Aiba’s life as well. 

A king or queen of Chiba was not quite the same as a king or queen on their planets. In fact, it was an elected position with a term of ten years. Aiba was in his third year of rule, and at thirty-three was the youngest person ever elected the “king” or “queen” of the settlement. But it was all too easy to understand why. Even with things somewhat lost in translation, Satoshi could see that Aiba was easygoing and knowledgeable, a figure who was looked up to and respected.

While Sho was the perfect king for his people, the type of person who would do his best to bring a conservative, tradition-oriented people into a new era, Satoshi found that Aiba was likely the perfect representative for his own people. And his sister, Satoshi thought fondly, with her determination and hard work after years of the status quo…Mina was perfect for Akatsuki. He looked at the two men in the room with him, considered his sister back home. The three of them would decide the future, wouldn’t they? The future of all three of their planets. 

Things would get better. He absolutely knew they would.

Come afternoon, Aiba was needed elsewhere. He and Sho were ushered back to the level where their guest rooms were until their host was once again free. Sho was a few doors down, waving to him. “I think I could do with a little Rakuen language practice. You?”

“I’ve missed beds,” Satoshi admitted. “It was difficult enough to get out of mine this morning.”

“Enjoy yourself,” Sho said with a chuckle before disappearing into his room.

Satoshi had barely laid down when the intercom at his door buzzed. He got up, heading over. When he opened the door, it slid open to reveal the Crown Prince of Kagerou, watching him with a rather sly smile. 

“The last time you came to my room like this, it ended with your ship blowing up,” Satoshi reminded him.

Sho’s smile faltered, and Satoshi rolled his eyes.

“I’m just teasing, you idiot,” Satoshi grumbled, grabbing Sho by the wrist and tugging him inside. The door shut behind him, and he pushed Sho against it hard, pulling him down for the kiss he hadn’t been able to give him in two whole days.

Sho responded in kind, stealing his breath before slipping a hand behind him, grabbing his ass. Satoshi chuckled, breaking their kiss to lean against him, fingers grasping Sho’s shirt as he breathed in the now-familiar and comforting scent of him. “What happened to language practice? It’s not like you to give up on something so easily.”

Sho’s eyes were dark, delightfully needy. “I’ve let you down, have I?” Sho’s voice dropped low, enough to make Satoshi’s cock twitch in response. “Forgiveness requested.”

Satoshi hoped there wasn’t a camera in the room recording their every move. But as soon as they made it across the room to the bed, shedding the fine Chiba fabrics with every stumbling step, he decided he didn’t care about voyeurs at all. Let them watch.

The bed was a bit cramped for the two of them later as they curled up together, Sho beside him with his hair messy and his plump lips swollen even further from kisses and other uses he’d seen fit to demonstrate so skillfully. Satoshi stroked Sho’s bottom lip with his thumb, still coming down from the incredible high that being with Sho brought on.

“Has the King of Chiba taught you the bad words yet?”

“Afraid not,” Sho muttered, taking Satoshi’s thumb into his mouth and giving it a firm suck.

He laughed gently, pulling his hand away. “You should ask him how to say ‘fuck me,’” he teased.

“Why? Saying it in our language isn’t good enough?” He leaned forward, lips grazing Satoshi’s ear. “Fuck me. Satoshi, I’d love for you to fuck me.”

He let out a shuddering breath, grinning as Sho teasingly nibbled his earlobe and moved back, looking into his eyes. 

“I just thought…” Satoshi mumbled, “…you’d sound hot speaking another language.”

“Well then couldn’t I just say anything? I could have Aiba-san teach me the word for ‘pineapple’ or ‘spoon’ and if I simply said it in a sexy voice, you’d never know the difference.” Sho’s fingers stroked Satoshi’s bicep, tickling lightly. “It’s not like you’re ambitious enough to learn a new language.”

He laughed. “I’d kick your ass for that, but it’s totally true. Ah, Sho-kun, how do you know me so well?”

Sho leaned in, kissing him softly, taking his time. Satoshi wanted this, he wanted this like nothing he’d ever wanted before. Maybe being stranded here on Rakuen had altered his brain chemistry. What he wanted with Sho was unrealistic and too much and way too soon. But he could pretend he had it. At least for now, he could pretend.

“This is much better than a cave floor,” he mumbled, tracing figure-eights on Sho’s hip with his fingertips.

“On that we are definitely in agreement.”

“Thank you.”

“Hmm?”

“For Akatsuki. For what you did for us, making us part of the equation.”

“Akatsuki has always been part of it to me,” Sho admitted, kissing his cheek. “And not just because Akatsuki’s prince is attractive.”

He wrapped a leg around Sho, pulling him closer still. “I was being sincere, and you flirt again. Stars, you’re horrible at it.”

“Pineapple,” was Sho’s strangely sultry reply. “Spoon.”

He slipped a hand between their bodies, greeting Sho’s erection with a few firm strokes that shut him up quickly. 

“Pineapple spoon, you say? As you wish, Your Highness.”

—

They’d been in Chiba for four days when an official came running into Aiba’s office, nearly out of breath. He and Aiba started speaking in rapid-fire Rakuen, and even Sho seemed to be picking up the tone of the conversation.

“They’re here,” Sho muttered, halfway through translating something with Aiba and two of the mining engineers. “Satoshi, this must mean they’re here.”

Aiba beckoned for them to follow him, and they went to the main command center, which was abuzz with activity. The large screen in the center of the room was showing the view from one of the cameras lining that invisible wall encircling Chiba. Satoshi’s breath caught in his throat when he saw the ships approaching.

There were six of them. Four were tinted red, and even in the snow storm still raging outside, it was obvious that they were Kagerou ships. The fifth ship was from the Akatsuki fleet. And the sixth, flying at the front of the formation…

“The Kaisei!” Sho cheered, Aiba offering him a hug of congratulations. “It’s the Kaisei!”

“Nino,” Satoshi muttered, holding out a hand, as though the screen several feet away was right before him. “Jun…”

Aiba gave orders quickly, ensuring that the communication channels were opened. A microphone was handed directly to Sho to avoid the language issues. Satoshi watched the screen, watched the ships come to a halt, floating in the air among the snow. They’d heard the beacon. And they’d come.

“Kaisei, this is Crown Prince Sakurai Sho of Kagerou.”

Satoshi didn’t realize he was crying until he heard Jun’s voice come through the speakers, echoing through the command center.

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but I’d rather hear from someone else right now if you don’t mind.”

Sho chuckled in understanding, handing over the microphone. Satoshi wiped his eyes, clearing his throat. “Matsumoto,” he said in his grumpiest of grumpy voices. “That’s no way to talk to the Crown Prince, and you know it. Remind me to have you executed when we get back home.”

He could hear the sound of men cheering over the speakers, Aiba and the command center workers chuckling at the undeniable joy they were hearing. It didn’t exactly require a translation.

“We’ve got some things to discuss,” Satoshi continued. “If you listened to our messages, then you know that we’ve been in the care of Aiba Masaki, the king of this settlement, Chiba. Akatsuki and Kagerou ships are welcome to land in peace so that the Crown Prince and I might be properly…rescued.”

“Acknowledged, Your Highness,” Jun said, and Satoshi was fairly certain he’d never heard Jun sound so emotional before. “To Aiba Masaki and the people of Chiba, this is the Kaisei and we have come in the name of Her Royal Majesty Ohno Mina, Queen of Akatsuki, whose brother has been in your care. We are accompanied by another Akatsuki ship, the Asahi. Representatives of the Kagerou Star Command are aboard the other four ships in the name of His Royal Majesty Sakurai Shun, King of Kagerou. The four ships are the…”

Aiba’s poor CompTab was working overtime as Jun continued to ramble on.

“Hey Nino?” Satoshi called out into the microphone.

“Yes?” came Nino’s confused voice over the speakers.

“Can you tell Jun to shut up a minute? The people down here don’t speak our language, and they’re still translating all that shit.”

“You could have said something, you stupid…” came Jun’s grouchy murmured reply, and Satoshi laughed.

Aiba rested a hand on Satoshi’s shoulder. “This man…he speaking badly of you, yes?”

“Oh no,” he replied, mouth away from the microphone. “He’s my most trusted advisor.”

Aiba gave him a strange look before clapping his hands, putting his advisors to work. All of the people planning to come underground to Chiba would need to be “cleaned” in quarantine just as he and Sho had.

Satoshi handed off the microphone to Sho, who let Jun and Nino know where to have the rescue fleet land and what the procedures would be. They were all invited to a meal at the King of Chiba’s table, and from there they’d be free to complete their mission. It was all happening so fast…

It was decided that Nino and Jun would come with two guards. Kagerou would be represented by three of their own guards. None would come armed.

Satoshi waited on the quarantine level while Sho remained several levels below, still working on translations with Aiba. None of the people who’d arrived to rescue him were his friends, after all, which reminded Satoshi how fragile the balance would be for Sho back home.

Nino emerged from the quarantine rooms first, looking a bit confused in the new Chiba clothes. Satoshi approached, and Nino bowed to him respectfully. He ignored protocol, wrapping Nino in a firm hug which was thankfully returned.

“You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“It’s a good thing it’ll take us more than a day to get home,” he replied, holding onto his friend tightly.

“I think Jun-kun’s missed you the most of anyone,” Nino whispered. “After all, it’s been more than a week and he hasn’t been able to be exasperated by you. It hit him very hard.”

Satoshi grinned. “It’s been hard for me, too, not being insulted every time I open my mouth.”

Nino stepped back, eyeing him warily. For the first time, Satoshi could see how exhausted Nino was, how worried he’d clearly been.

“The people here,” Satoshi explained, “they’re good people. And they can help us.”

“With what? Our fashion sense?”

He rolled his eyes. Stars, he’d missed Nino. “With the mines.”

“What about the mines?” Matsumoto Jun asked, strolling out of the quarantine room with that usual smartass look of his. 

“Chiba is willing to help with the…” Satoshi said, seeing his advisor struggling and failing to look just as cool and collected as usual. “Oh come here, you.”

To his surprise, Jun broke down, wrapping his arms around Satoshi so tightly he could barely breathe. Looking past Jun’s shoulder, he could see Nino smiling. He found himself thinking of Sho, and he shut his eyes. The person Sho had trusted with his life had betrayed him. There’d be no tearful reunions for Sho. The second his ship touched down in Kagerou, he’d have to fight for an audience, fight to show everything he’d learned in Chiba. To prove he was no traitor, to prove that his solution would work.

“We have to go to Kagerou. With Sho-kun.”

Jun released him, wiping his eyes. “Nope. No, not doing that. Her Majesty said that…”

“I promised him I’d help him. And I may be many disappointing things, Jun, but I’m still a man of my word.”

“You survived on a hostile planet for over a week,” Nino pointed out. “You’re a little less disappointing than you were the last time we saw you.”

He could see the wheels turning in Jun’s head, and he decided to cut him off. “And yes, I’m sleeping with him,” Satoshi said, crossing his arms defiantly. “But that’s…that’s not the only reason why I’m helping him.”

Jun sighed, shaking his head. “You hate Kagerou.”

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted, already shuddering at the thought of being stuck under one of those sterile domes again. “But Sho-kun has a plan to end the strike and change the lives of our miners forever. Aiba-san, he’s the king here, he’s promised to help, but it all hinges on Sho’s father actually listening to him. If the Kaisei goes to Kagerou, I’m willing to vouch for everything Sho says. Everything.”

“What really happened that night?” Jun asked, eyes serious again. “On the Miyabi.”

He told them, everything from Sho coming to his room to Sho’s explanation about the kaenium and everything else until the escape pod landing on the surface of Rakuen. Nino and Jun exchanged nervous looks. Clearly the “Sho’s bodyguard tried to murder him” bit had rattled them.

“The Queen knows everything we know, but under her orders, we went to Kagerou and met with the King. We may have…lied a bit,” Nino admitted.

“A bit?” Satoshi asked.

“We might have said that you and his son had become friendly during all the strike negotiations. That Crown Prince Sho’s secret ‘vacation’ was actually just to meet up with you. To go fishing. At Lake Kobayashi,” Jun explained.

“But we didn’t go to Lake Kobayashi,” Satoshi pointed out.

“We might have also said that during said fishing trip the always impulsive Prince Satoshi of Akatsuki and the always academically-minded Crown Prince Sho had struck up a conversation about their mutual interest in Rakuen.”

“I didn’t have any interest in…”

Nino put a hand over his mouth, smiling nervously. “What, you’ve been obsessed with Rakuen for _years_.”

Satoshi raised an eyebrow, and Nino took his hand back.

Jun continued. “The Crown Prince apparently had enough books about Rakuen in his personal library that the King bought it. He’d apparently been rather concerned about his son lately, had feared he was plotting behind his back. There had even been whispers in the House of Councillors about it.”

“But of course,” Nino said with a wink, “he was only trying to hide his friendship with the Prince of Akatsuki. It would look bad for Sakurai Sho, his father’s representative in the case of the miners’ strike, if his friendship with Queen Mina’s representative was discovered. Can’t be very tough in negotiations if you’re buddy-buddy with the opposing side. Politics, you know.”

“And long story short,” Jun finished up, “you went to do a few orbits of Rakuen and there was an accident. Thankfully, Maruyama had that ruby earring from the Crown Prince to back up the story and to justify our planets working together to mount a rescue.”

Satoshi held up a hand. “You’re saying that Sho’s father doesn’t believe his son is a traitor. Rather, he thinks that I’m such an irresponsible sack of shit that I was the one who talked Sho into going to Rakuen?”

“You know how Kagerou thinks of Akatsuki,” Nino pointed out. “Lazy. Capricious. Impulsive. All that good stuff. It was far easier for the King to swallow that down than to even consider that his son would be off on secret political negotiations behind his back. Far easier for you to be tainting his golden heir with all your…Akatsuki-ness.”

Satoshi scowled. “I don’t know which of you will get beheaded first, but you’re both extremely dead.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Jun said.

“And the dead pilot? And Sho’s dead bodyguard?” Satoshi asked. “How are you planning to blame that on me and my sorry reputation?”

“As you said, Your Highness,” Nino replied. “It’ll take us more than a day to get home. Or rather, to Kagerou. I’m sure you and your…friend, the Crown Prince, will be able to come up with something.”

“I can’t show my face on Kagerou now!” Satoshi hissed. “The king thinks I’m corrupting his son!”

Jun nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. “I think that’s fair to say.”

“I promised Sho that I’d help him!”

“You already have,” Nino said. “Indirectly. Thanks to you, nobody knows he’s really a traitor.”

“He’s _not_ a traitor,” Satoshi complained, “he’s just trying to solve the strike. And now he has, with Chiba’s help.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Jun asked.

To prove his continued loyalty to Kagerou, Sho would never be allowed to meet with Satoshi again. Even if King Shun bent in favor of Sho’s reforms, accepting the new technology from Chiba and ending the strike, it was now Satoshi’s official “fault” that Sho had crash landed on Rakuen in the first place. It was Satoshi who had put Sho’s life in danger. Even Mina would have to react in order to keep the peace with Kagerou. 

Satoshi’s days as her diplomat and representative were likely over, not that he’d mourn the loss of that very much. But Sho…having to give up Sho…

“Stars, you really _are_ sleeping with him,” Jun murmured.

“Let’s go to dinner. And then let’s get the hell off this planet,” he said, stomping off and leaving his friends to follow him.

—

He’d asked the boat captain to bring him out to the middle of the lake. It was a warm day on Lake Kobayashi. Abundant sunshine, the boat bobbing gently along. He had his favorite fishing rod with him, but he hadn’t even bothered. The captain didn’t much care what he did so long as he got paid for bringing him out here.

Satoshi watched a flock of birds fly overhead, each one of them normally-sized and likely just traveling. No ambitions of dive bombing him and carrying him off to his doom. He frowned, putting a hand to his chest, fingers brushing against his shirt just over his scars. The doctors had checked him out, had offered to perform surgery to reduce the scarring as best they could. 

He’d declined.

He’d been back on Akatsuki for two weeks and at the lake cabin for most of it after going to his sister and officially resigning as a member of her circle of advisors and surrogates. She’d accepted it, knowing the cost. She’d hugged him once the throne room had cleared, hugged him like she had the night before she’d been crowned, when his always confident, self-sufficient older sister had begged him not to leave her to do this alone.

Jun had probably told her everything, even though Satoshi had said it wasn’t necessary.

Mina said his resignation was only temporary in her eyes. She’d eventually start trotting him out again when there was a museum to open in another hemisphere, when there was a formal event she didn’t want to attend because she had two left feet and hated dancing.

Satoshi had been at the lake cabin for five days when the message had arrived stating that the strike was over. That the Akatsuki miners living on the Kagerou asteroids were going back to work, and that they’d be paid twice as much as they’d been prior to the strike. More reforms were promised, including housing refurbishments. Newly-discovered technology would allow for more efficiency in the mining process, which was what would allow for the pay raise and other improvements in worker welfare.

None of the official news releases made mention of Rakuen, of the Chiba settlement, or its king, Aiba Masaki. Satoshi supposed that was Aiba’s choice in the end.

There’d been no other major announcements from Kagerou since.

He heard the sound of another boat’s engine, and he sighed, sitting up on deck to look out at the horizon. Jun looked utterly ridiculous as usual, standing at the front of the boat with his arms crossed trying to look more important than he was.

The boat pulled up alongside, and Satoshi held out a hand, pulling Jun over. Jun took in the sorry state of him. Sunburnt, staring up at the sky, sullen.

“I’m busy,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Jun said with his usual amount of respect. Which was very little. “How many have you caught today, Your Highness?”

“A thousand,” he lied without even trying to sound convincing. “But it’s a catch and release day, which is why you don’t see any of them here.”

“Catch and release, huh?”

“Why are you here?”

“You are needed on shore right away.”

He narrowed his eyes. Mina wasn’t even going to let him sulk for a month like he wanted? Stars, she didn’t want him to babysit, did she? 

“Fine.”

Jun waved off the other boat, and together the two of them headed back to shore. The captain brought them right to the pier that jutted out just a few steps from his beloved cabin. He thanked the captain, getting his gear and following Jun down the gangplank and onto the wooden pier.

He nearly dropped his rod and tackle box when he saw the Crown Prince of Kagerou standing on the shore waiting for him with a bemused look on his handsome face. He stook there with his arms crossed, that hideous ruby stud back in his ear, wearing a long red coat with his family’s crest even in the warm breeze because he was just such a proper guy.

Jun took the fishing equipment from him instead. “I will be in my office.” 

His advisor walked off without another word, headed for the guest house on Satoshi’s property where he stayed while Satoshi was here on vacation. Aside from the guard posted at the cabin entrance, they were pretty much alone.

Once Jun was out of earshot, Satoshi walked up. The first thing he did was give Sho a very firm poke in the chest.

“Hello to you, too, Satoshi-kun.”

He looked up, meeting Sho’s round, dark eyes. “I had to make sure you weren’t a hologram or a projection. Like Aiba’s stupid wall on Rakuen.”

Sho nodded. “As you can see, I’m quite real.”

“Where’s your entourage today?”

Sho turned a little, gesturing off in the distance, towards Kobayashi Town a few kilometers away. Presumably his guards had escorted him here and had been dismissed. “The Miyabi II is currently berthed next to your Kaisei in the town space dock.”

“The Miyabi II?” Satoshi asked dubiously.

“I’m not very creative with names,” Sho said with a lightness to his voice that Satoshi found a bit strange.

“Let’s talk inside,” he said, walking past Sho, his heart racing as feelings of both confusion and hope roiled inside him.

Sho followed him up the steps and into the cabin. It was Maruyama guarding the door. Sho pointed to his ear and smiled. “Thanks for holding onto it for me.”

“Your Highness,” Maru said with a nervous bow of his head.

“Maru, go bother Jun. Make sure he’s working hard,” Satoshi ordered needlessly, ushering Sho into his cabin and locking the door behind them.

For a prince, he didn’t have the nicest cabin on the lake. Although ‘cabin’ was still a bit of a misnomer. He had a two-story house here with guest rooms that were currently overstuffed with art supplies. With all his newfound free time, he’d been in the mood to take up art again but hadn’t yet settled on an art form. Sketching, painting, sculpture…he’d bought a little bit of everything for now.

He ushered Sho into his sitting room, walls lined with thick bulletproof glass that offered a stunning view of the lake. He pressed a button on a wall panel, tinting the glass so nobody outside could see in. Sho walked around the room, examining the various pictures Satoshi had on the walls. 

Artwork his mother had picked out for the palace in the capital for Mina and that Mina had found ugly. Vaguely a farm. Vaguely a waterfall. Their mother was a sweet woman, but her taste in art left much to be desired. In retirement, his father and mother lived in a modest palace far to the west, away from the politics of the capital. The ugly art was a nice way to keep his mother in his mind. 

Sho kept his thoughts on the artwork to himself while Satoshi poured them each a cup of sake from a bottle Jun had been chilling for him.

They stood together, looking out the windows to the lake.

“I told my father the truth. I told him everything.”

Satoshi nearly spat out his drink. He turned, seeing that Sho’s gaze remained distant. He wondered if “everything” included the fact that he and Sho had become considerably more than mere friends on Rakuen.

“I appreciate all your friends did to help, I truly do. But lying to my father, sneaking behind his back, betraying my family and my people…it’s not who I am. And all these years I’d been so afraid of him. Of letting him down, of not being able to live up to the standards he’d set for me as his heir…I ended up being more afraid of becoming a person without integrity. Who’d let someone innocent take the fall for my own reckless behavior. So I confessed my betrayal, confessed about the mining experiments. I told him about Harada and about how you saved my life. I showed him that the Akatsuki people are good and decent and worthy of our respect.”

“I see you’re still standing here, alive, so should I presume you aren’t due to be executed for treason?”

“I’m standing here, alive, because my father is merciful. I’m also standing here, alive, because I let him take credit for the kaenium tech, the data and information Aiba-san provided us. He will respect Aiba’s wishes, the wishes of everyone in Chiba. Kagerou will not interfere with them.”

“That’s good.”

Sho had a sip from his cup. “I was asked to step down as my father’s heir in favor of my sister, the second born in my family.”

Satoshi’s eyes widened. “What?”

“But I’m not being exiled or disowned or any of that. I did end the strike, after all,” Sho admitted, an odd sort of pride in his voice. Satoshi looked at him in astonishment. Sho had spent his entire life preparing to be king. But he didn’t look remotely upset.

“What are you going to do?”

“My father has appointed me to a newly-created position. I’m still a prince, just not a Crown Prince. I am now the chairman of the Kagerou Mine Workers’ Protection committee. I will serve as my father’s representative, presenting a Kagerou perspective. All miners now have been granted the ability to formally organize and any grievances they have will now go straight to the committee, which will give them a fair hearing. I’m just looking for a co-chairman.”

Satoshi raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

“You see, the committee needs a chairman representing the Akatsuki perspective. Any grievances brought before the committee need to be examined from all angles to remain fair. Which is why my co-chairman can’t be someone from my planet. They’d have to come from yours.” Sho leaned forward, a smile on his perfect lips. “Perhaps I should ask your advisor, Matsumoto-kun. He did write all your talking points in our previous strike negotiations, did he not?”

Satoshi scowled. “Fuck you.”

Sho laughed, the laugh Satoshi had sorely missed these last few lonely weeks. Sho moved to set his empty sake cup on a table, coming back with a wicked twinkle in his eyes. He set his hands on Satoshi’s shoulders, a rather patronizing gesture.

“Were you thinking that _you_ were a better candidate for co-chairman?” Sho asked innocently. “Committee headquarters will be in a fairly neutral location. Not on Kagerou, not on Akatsuki. Likely on one of our asteroid colonies. You’d have to see me quite often, at least to start. I’m sure the miners have a lot of grievances to air right off the bat, and I know how much you like your free time here.”

He looked up, meeting Sho’s gaze. “You’d have been a really good king, Sho-kun. I mean it.”

Sho’s smile was a little sad. “A small price to pay for a good cause.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

“And I should also tell you that when I’m not performing my duties for the committee that I’ll be visiting our friend on Rakuen. Their ‘words archive’ needs a bit of fine tuning, and the King of Chiba was looking for a language tutor. I have volunteered my time as a way to thank him for all his help. I’m positive that you’d be welcome too. Surely there’s some Akatsuki slang he’d love to learn.”

“May I ask when this committee will be up and running?”

“Oh, perhaps in a week or two, once we settle on a neutral site, can get a space set aside for formal negotiations. But first, I told my father that I needed a vacation.”

“A vacation, huh?”

“Since my last one went pretty badly,” Sho said. “Getting shot and all.”

Satoshi took a step forward, slipping his arms around him. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

“Space cows,” Sho noted. “And what were they called again? Evil space birds? Having to pee outside with a space cow watching, that was pretty awful. The protein bar diet…sleeping in an escape pod. Sleeping in a cave. That quarantine shower…”

“Should we fuck in here or in my bedroom?” he asked, slipping his hands under Sho’s shirt to find his soft, warm skin.

Sho looked down, shaking his head in disappointment. “Satoshi-kun, I need to reiterate that your flirting technique is just…”

“Needs work, huh?”

“I’d say so.”

“You didn’t answer my question yet.”

Sho answered with a kiss that left him weak in the knees. When he finally came up for air, Satoshi shook with laughter. “This should be a very interesting committee,” Satoshi muttered, pressing his lips to the corner of Sho’s mouth. “I’ve never had sex on an asteroid before.”

“I’ve never had sex on Akatsuki before,” Sho admitted in return.

He took Sho’s hand in his, tugging him to the stairs. 

“Then let’s get this vacation started, Mr. Chairman.”


End file.
